Our Half-Speed Camino
Charlie and Wynette. No Camino is complete without a visit here. Free flowing wine for pilgrims.
We met these delightful South Korean men on the trail earlier when we had stopped for a bit to watch some birds swooping in circles. They told us the Korean word for “bird” I think. Later, we met them again at the wine fountain. They were very excited and worried we’d pass by without stopping. Of course, we did stop. All this communicated with no common language.
Charlie. Here they say the i’s in the Spanish way. The frugal Scot was lucky to find wee fee wifi.
Charlie. The shadow is also making a collection of photos of Spanish doors.
I talked in the blog last year about goal and destination, how the point is the journey but you need the destination, like ying and yang. It sounds trite but there is an analogy between the Camino and life. You start out the day walking with 400 miles to go and at the end you still have 385 miles to go. It seems like it will last forever and the end seems far in the future, too fast to worry about. Kind of like going from age 25 to 26, the end is just as far away. The days are fun and long and seem like they will go on forever.
Then you get close to Santiago and everybody is sad that it is coming to an end. It is hard to concentrate on each day without thinking about finishing.
Our plan this time is just to go on day to day until we are ready to change. Then we are going to take the bus to Santiago and start again going to Finisterre and Muxia.
So it is like in life. You go as far as you want then you take the bus and start a new one that will be different.
Charlie. A typical pilgrim goes 15 miles (25 km) a day. In 2013 we averaged 11 miles a day about 75% speed. This time we planned 7-8 miles a day and are making a bit over 7 miles a day over the first six days so we are right on target.
The idea was not to walk a specific number of miles but to take our time, stop whenever we want, have afternoons to explore towns we passed through too quickly last year, etc.
It had been working out great so far. We love having free time each day. We are not exhausted at the end of the day. We are being gentle with Wynette’s feet.
Another way to look at it. Say the average pilgrim is 40 years old and walk 15 miles a day. That is 600 mile-years a day. We are walking 7*65=455 mile-years a day or 75% speed, much better 🙂
Charlie and Wynette. This is Susan from Manhattan and Jill from Australia, who we met on the trail and who are going short distances like us. We stopped at a bar and all had fresh squeezed orange juice in the shade.
Charlie. We stayed at a lovely casa rural in Villamayor de Monjardin, a big name for a tiny town. We stayed here in our 2013 Camino also and were happy to be able to stay here again. The picture above is our room. Here is the breakfast room.
The front door. As you can see they filled up, four rooms.
Just outside our room.
And the amazing ceiling.
Charlie. A twofer but it still doesn’t get us down. This was the first day we started in the rain. It has been hot so we welcomed the rain and cloudy weather. It only rained for an hour or two but was a nice walking day. Here is me in my fashionable rain kilt.
Look
Charlie. At least once a day you see a shoe or pair of shoes cast off by the trail, usually on a marker post. We see a shoe but to the person who discarded them it is an instrument of foot torture. Most pilgrims have some foot problems.