Yesterday turned put to be really interesting. As it turned out, the albergue where I stayed is one of the most famous, and celebrated, on the Camino. I know why – it was beautiful. Gorgeous grounds, sculptures and pool, and good food.
I came in late – about 5:30pm – and as I walked in a bloke who I’d met in Pamplona shook his head and said they’re fully booked. They’ve been turning people away, he said. I said I’d just go check, just in case. And they found a bed for me. As the hospitalero ( the person who runs the albergue) was leading me to my room (shared by about 20 others!), the bloke from Pamplona shook his head and yelled out to me: The Camino Gods must be with you Bill.
Now, why did I get a bed when others were turned away? I have no idea. Here are some options:
- Perhaps the others were in a group and I was alone.
- Perhaps I looked so pathetic and in pain that they took pity on me.
- Perhaps it was my Sydney Swans cap and they were Swannies supporters.
I have no idea. But I later started to think – what if I knew at the start of the day that I was heading to one of the great albergues of the Camino? How would that affect my day?
I’d be tense, wondering if I’d get a bed. Wondering if those French dudes passing me were going to beat me to the last beds. I would go fast, I could possibly put undue stress on my body. I could possibly make my injuries worse. I wouldn’t stop and take photos. I wouldn’t see the beauty around me. My whole day would be geared solely towards getting to the cool albergue and making sure I got accommodation.
Now, as it turns put, there was another albergue in Boadilla, but it looked skanky in comparison. But it was a bed. You see, I purposefully haven’t read any reviews or forums about what albergues are the best ones to stay at. As I’ve said, I’m doing this walk with my PGS – my Personal Guidance System – and I’m just letting that plug into The Way, and have it guide me.
So when I walked into Boadilla yesterday, I walked past the skanky albergue, followed my instincts, and ended up at the cool place, where in fact about a dozen of my faster walking friends were already settled. I got my bed, and I had a good meal, caught up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and the hospitaleros even did my washing for me! €6 for the night.
Things could not have worked out better.
But, last night as I was settling down to sleep, I started to freak out. What if I couldn’t get a room tomorrow night? Everyone was descending on this town 25 kms away – Carrion de los Condes. Did it have enough rooms to hold us all?
So I went online and checked hotels in Carrion. There was only one taking bookings – with only 2 rooms left though! – and a single room was €60. I considered it briefly, then went nah. If I’m to do this walk intuitively, then I can’t let my fear take hold. I’ve got to play by the rules.
So I didn’t book the hotel.
The next morning, this morning, everyone was up and out early. The light was exquisite, and I stopped a lot and took photos. I was walking extra slow because this morning I decided to go cold turkey on the painkillers. I’ve been on 600mgs of Ibuprofen 3 times a day for nearly 2 weeks now.
Maybe that explains my grey hair.
I also didn’t put my knee bandage on, and no Voltaren cream. I wanted to see how I went. The first 10kms were great. The last 15kms were painful. Very painful. And of course everyone streamed past me.
I began to wonder – would there be a bed for me in Carrion? Should I have booked that hotel? But my emotional body was testing me. It was playing on my fears, more exposed possibly because of my pain. I deserved a nice bed tonight, I thought. I’m suffering.
What crap.
I don’t deserve anything. And if I’m suffering, then it’s my own stupid fault.
About 4kms out from Carrion, I turned and saw a big group of pilgrims about a km behind me. I found myself going faster, even though it was hurting me to do so. These were the people who were going to take the last beds. These were the people who would have me sleep out in a field under a tree.
Spain may not have deadly spiders, or snakes, or great white sharks, but they have gypsies. And everyone knows that gypsies inhabit the night and steal things off pilgrims sleeping under trees in fields.
What crap, all of it.
I slowed down, and walked into Carrion – a beautiful little town – and left the way-marked path and found myself outside the Santa Clara Monastery. A glorious ancient building.
PGS - The Way 
Bill: Enjoying your blog immensely. My wife and I walked from SJPdP to Pamplona last year. We’ll be back next year for more. In the meantime, your blog reminds me to plan less and enjoy each moment as it occurs. Thank you for taking the time to share your journey with peregrinos all over the world.
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Thanks Michael – from Pamplona on it kicks in! Bill
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i found your blog because i’m planning on walking in a year. i’m a fly-by-the-seat of your pants kind of gal, so it appeals. i’m loving your stories, training on the opposite side of the world, and looking forward to tomorrow’s blog!
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Hi Bill, I love how you are only using your intuition to guide you on the Camino, it never fails. I view my intuition as the Holy Spirit speaking to me and has never failed me yet. Keep true to yourself and you will be safe. Enjoy your walk one step at a time.
There will be three of us traveling so we might have the pleasure of sleeping under the trees!
Nancy in Denver
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Must have been the Swans hat!! They had a win in Wellington last night against St Kilda. Cheer cheer…
Really enjoying your blog. Thanks for the insights and photos.
Anne
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The Swannies in the Grand Finals again this year, yeah! Tell Goodsie and Kieran Jack I’m wearing the cap!
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Hi Bill ,
Enjoy your take on the pain + fear relationship – also the stilling of the emotional mind . Acceptance , of all , not resistance , has always been the key .
Perhaps it’s a more “female ” way of looking at things …… Accepting things , not using energy to resist but working with , not against , to get to the end goal . Just a thought for a walk . Intuition and acceptance I suggest , makes life a whole lot easier 🙂
Take care of your body , thank it for it’s generosity in taking your determined mind over this adventure …. look forward to more posts .
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Thanks Karen. Trying to take each day as it comes. Nothing planned. Just walking. A beautiful simplicity, really. Hope you’re well! bb xx
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I really have to thank you for your daily blog, I look forward to reading it everyday and seeing your wonderful pictures. With only 4 1/2 months til I head out from Brissy to discover my own Camino, it is answering some of my own questions and putting a few fears to bed.
Buen Camino.
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Hey Carla, you’ll have enormous fun. And probably like me you’ll learn a thing or two! Bill
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Loving your stories and your photos. I’m getting excited about the experience. Looks like you’re heading into wet weather. I’m interested in how you feel about the Camino in wet weather. If it doesn’t worry any of you, then I won’t let the weather forcasts deter me in mid May. Will I be able to use my limited Spanish or does everyone speak English?
Elizabeth
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Yes Elizabeth, today was the first day of rain in 17 days of walking for me. And more is forecast tomorrow! All part of the Camino…
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Just found your blog last week and have been enjoying it immensely. It is encouraging to learn of those “of a certain age” undertaking this journey… I will be making my Camino in September 2014 if all goes planned. Someone, somewhere wrote that one’s Camino begins when one decides to do it. I didn’t plan to do it – I was on a church pilgrimage last September to Fatima, Lourdes and Santiago. Santiago grabbed me and hasn’t let go! It is something I just HAVE to do! I think about it all the time and pray for the pilgrims on the Way every day.
I am loving your images as well!! What camera did you choose to take on your Camino? As a photographer, I will feel “uneasy” without my (too heavy) DSLR! Perhaps that will be my penance and another lesson of the Camino….
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It’s 2:10am in Hawaii and I am reading your blog, enjoying your insights and photography. My ex and current friend recently saw the movie “The Way” (2010) directed by Emilio Estevez and immediately wanted to do the Camino. He has a tendency to come up with sudden and unexpected new ideas many of which he instigates immediately but doesn’t finish. He has a wonderful positivity that seems to believe anything is possible yet it often frustrated me as I am more the sort who would advise one to plan well in advance, do proper training (as you did), and investigate a bit into different walking pilgrimages before settling on one. I had always had a pre-concieved notion of the camino being a commercialized and pre-packaged experience…was it the most scenic walking route that one could do in Europe for 600km? Maybe not. Did one go for the mere fact that there was an Infrastructure of pilgrim hostels and eateries? Or the tomb of Saint James which may not actually be there anyway? Would I want to walk a way that was chosen probably arbitrarily hundreds of years ago to mimic a pagan walk or boost commercial revenue in a particular region through claiming to have a relic or selling indulgences? Usually one goes to a place to see that sight…the unique beauty of it…. was this road uniquely beautiful? Or this experience vs. another walking experience? He would constantly talk about his camino, a journey that had seemingly manifested out of thin air and was so sudden and soon. Why did it bother me? Was it that for all the years we had shared together, and I have known him for 13.5 years, he had never had much time for us yet for this walk and even now he barely had a day to spend with me yet he could spontaneously for the camino stop working for over a month, clear his schedule? At the time that he was discussing his camino… and you were probably at this stage of your journey, I was debating whether or not to go on a cruise with my parents in the mediterranean. I had been invited free of charge but had not flown to Rome with them because I feared a rare land-sickness condition that followed some cruiser’s experience. It is a little understood cureless disease of neuroplasticity that, after my first cruise in 2007, had affected me for a month. After my endless online research I had not come up with a sense that I had a green light to go…. it was too risky that the disorder might return and sometimes the dizziness can last for years. The man clincher was that I am already affected by another disease of neuroplasticity. A year ago, at just 33 years of age, without warning, I developed a serious neuropathic pain disorder from a simple injury of my occipital nerve. All I had done was lean back in a shampoo bowl at a hair salon and this had been sufficient to damage a nerve. Two months later I had uncontrollable bodywide sensory changes and pain. It is called CRPS and is also little understood and has no cure. What amazes me about your entries about the subject of fear is that I learned these very lessons from not the camino, but the hardships I have had to cut through these past months. One of the qualities of my pain disorder is that even a small rather seemingly benign injury, like just having a needle prick me, or cutting my foot, can at best cause traveling pain throughout my body, upper body burning, nausea etc… and at worst can change the sensory dynamics of that limb permanently… causing me pain even when the wind blows on that limb or when a sleeve touches it… That is what happened to my arms, anyway. I had a blood draw from my left arm in January and suddenly the whole arm changed. It felt like there was glass in my veins, it was sensitive to the slightest touch, the joints in my hand became stiffer, I felt burning, and to this day most of these symptoms continue including a constant sting from where the needle pierced my vein. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is… and it happened and it’s happening and it may never stop happening. I have talked to people that have had legs or fingers amputated in extreme cases were the limb is so swollen or damaged that it becomes unusable and an infection sets in. Recently a man who had a limb amputated told me that the only difference between this disease and cancer is death. In addition to what I have described I have had other nerve injuries from injection procedures… more damage from infusions of Ketamine… and an old leg problem I had at 18 has returned…where if I raise my leg past 30 or so degrees while laying down suddenly the peroneal nerve is in terrible pain….Now, my condition isn’t nearly as poor as many who have this… but like your concern about the bed at the end of the long day I began to fear. I began to fear raising my leg, injuring myself at all, my future…my future. What would it be? What was I capable of? Was fear or reason making me avoid the cruise? Avoid everything? I knew then I was angry at my friend because I wanted to be able to go and I had deemed myself unable… and perhaps forever unable…. to do anything so strenuous that might result in injury. I was angry that my folks could travel, he could travel… and what could I do? During the many long hours that I had fought through the harder roads of this painful journey I had thought lovingly of my last trip to Italy and Greece in 2011. I longed to travel again, immerse myself in beauty again and in the moment, ideally return as a whole healthy person again. I had left a box of things behind at the art school in Greece I had attended with the promise to return in the Spring of 2012 but I hadn’t returned for other reasons. Then, May 3, my injury occurred and my life changed. I kept insisting to myself that I would attend the next session the next half of the year. A year and 2 months passed before I could even write the school head to dissolve the box by giving the items away or give him any update. I had somehow needed that box. I needed to feel that some part of me was still standing with one foot in my old life. But then one day I just wrote him. I just did it because it needed to be done. Two days ago was my year anniversary of being hurt. The year mark is noteworthy because I had read often that many people who get this condition can get remission within the first year if given proper treatment. I had made mistakes along the way, getting further injured with injections… an injection in November 2012 had changed the course of the disease from possibly improving to a dramatic worsening…. these were my choices, these procedures. Could I trust myself to continue to make choices? Yes, I understand the fear you were describing in your post, how it ruins the journey and worsens the pain. So far I haven’t really gotten to the hostel or inn that has a bed for me so that I can say that the way led me to where I needed to be. I am still on the road. I just don’t know. I recently asked myself a similar question to what you asked: what is the worst case? The worst case is that my condition does worsen at some point along the journey of my life and that worsening may be due to some fault of mine. The worst case is that I live in terrible pain. The worst case is that I cannot get through it. This realization is not quite the same as your sleeping under the tree but perhaps similar to your ambulance fear regarding your injuries. I realized a few things… 1. that my strength has carried me this far and surprises me so along the way by growing steadily to meet every challenge and 2. that if I fear these outcomes I will ruin today…tomorrow…the essence of this moment and whatever functional time I have left. 3. the stress of the fear…like you believe, might manifest that reality. Like you stated about your camino…I have to go forward thinking that I will have a pain free journey and that all will be well. So, I may not be on THE camino… but I am on a camino. I would like to join my friend. If this was all a movie – my life- if this was my way…. then this poetic walk would be what heals me. Some people do achieve remission through “boot camp” workouts… the statement I just made may be folklore among the ill, or may be true. I haven’t met anyone who has… but it’s “out there” in the jumble of other things patients and doctors have said about this disease that few are researching. So what if it could make me well? Or, worse, what if I was injured… what if my body which has become out of shape since the injuries… gets badly hurt. So, I am reading blogs like yours and watching videos to see what I would be up against… and asking myself if I did go just part of the way, without caring about the stamps or Santiago, which part is the most beautiful? (Maybe you can answer that.) I think although I would want to trust the camino to provide I would feel compelled to have something reserved as it would be difficult for me to sleep outside… but this is how I have been all these months, seeing doctors, reading blogs, wondering… how can I make this journey safer? I want to trust the camino. I do. As I read your posts I thought, “It provides for him, but for me it would likely offer the wet grass and the tree.” As much as I try…. the essence of it is that I still don’t trust and I don’t feel safe and I fear. And it is ruining my days. I need to take a stand against fear. Recently I was afraid to take a swim in the ocean here in Hawaii because a healing cut on my foot looked questionably recovered. The salt water, if it irritated the cut, would stir up pain again. I had a few drinks and found myself laying on the shore letting the waves wash over, happy and unhurt. I was OK. I guess the camino had provided for me after all. Thanks for your blog here, truly. Sorry this was so long. If you have any thoughts about injuries and the camino, your experience or the experience of others, and the risks, I would appreciate it.
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Will do a big review of injuries etc at the end of the walk – but take a read of my various earlier posts on the difficulties I and others have had. There are very few people walk the Camino don’t have some kind of physical injury or problem.
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Thank you for your reply. Did you mean to say there are few people who didn’t get an injury or problem from the Camino walk, or few people that didn’t start out with issues and are meeting those challenges along the trail and walking despite them? It seems to me from my small readings anyway that nearly everyone gets blisters, and then some develop knee or ankle pain… others more. Enjoy your journey! Buen Camino
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Hi blooming recklessly, I will answer your messages but I have to get back to sleep now because I have a long day ahead of me. Thank you for the interest you’re showing. Bill
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I also wanted to ask that after your have decided not to read (due to length) or read the above post that you delete it. I still haven’t become accustomed to sharing personal matters over the internet, and perhaps in my enthusiasm to draw parallels my comment was an over share regarding my personal life. Apologies. But I wanted to underline how your blog can be very meaningful to the people who read it!
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Thank you. I’ve tried to do something different – not the nuts and bolts stuff ypu get in most blogs – more the internal journey.
I’m pleased you’re getting something from it!
Bill
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