Author: cpcrowley

My Wife: Dorotea Ricardo

Charlie. Wynette makes the hotel reservations. She started giving the name Charles Crowley but it is not familiar to Spanish ears and always got garbled so she changed to using Dorotea Ricardo and they always get it right.

By the way, Wynette is doing great with her Spanish. She is often gabbing away with the hotel or albergue people. Once they see she knows some Spanish they go on and on. Most people walking the Camino do not know Spanish. I think they are glad to have someone who can understand them.

State of the Camino: Half Way

Today is day 28, 25 left to go. We have walked 26 of those days. We have walked 195 miles averaging 7.5 miles per day. We have stayed in 27 different towns, we stayed two days in Carrión de los Condes.

We have skipped 80 miles by bus, train and taxi. We have skipped most of the same parts we skipped last time. It turns out we had good reasons to skip the segments we did, through suburbs and stretches where it’s a long way between places to stop.

In the next week we will walk to Ponferrada. Then the plan is to take a bus to Santiago and start walking to Finisterre and Muxia. We’re a little ahead of schedule so we may have time to see the north coast of Galicia and walk some of the English Camino from A Coruna.

The Rain in Spain

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Wynette. Lynn asked about the rain. She and her husband Michael are planning to walk the Camino so they are particularly interested.

We’ve only needed to wear our rain gear four or five days so far. That’s out of 28 days of walking. Usually when we are wearing the gear it is not actually raining, just threatening. In above photo, Charlie has his pack cover on, but rain coat only at the ready. Rain is usually light sprinkles and very off and on, more off than on. The exception: we’ve been in two drenching downpours. The first one, about a week ago, lasted only 5 or 10 minutes. We were lucky that day to get to our albergue when we did because rain was worse later. Then a few days ago we were in a downpour that lasted about 30 minutes. Plus wind.

We’ve heard exactly one clap of thunder. Someone told us that night that the force of the lightening from that one knocked a pilgrim off his feet but he wasn’t hurt.

We’ve felt lucky. Rain is often forecast that doesn’t materialize. (Charlie said we have the New Mexico rain jinx.) We’re not sure if this is typical weather for this time of year. There’s rain in forecast for next few days (100% chance) and someone mentioned they heard the word downpour mentioned in forecast for this Thursday.

We Always Follow the Camino Arrows…

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…  except when a bar calls.

Wynette. In the towns we pass through on the way to our destination for the night, we rarely pass up a bar. If we’re lucky, there will be a town every 3 to 5 miles. Most towns are tiny and often have only one bar. The bars are where you get great coffee, a bite to eat, and, most important, use the servicios (what we’d call a bathroom and the Brits would call a loo). Also great to rest the feet for a bit.

Bars in Spain are essentially what we call cafes in the US. They do serve beer and wine, etc., but the drink most requested as the weather gets colder is café con leche (espresso coffee with hot milk).

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