galicia ahead
another walking day by myself, with another early start. in fact, the earliest start so far on the camino frances this time around. forced early, by the korean ladies who get up at 4:45. so, no excuses, up, quick breakfast with joghurt, nuts and bit of dried fruit. off we all go.
the old cast is back. the italian part of my familia peregrina goes left, i go right. it is the shorter option for today, and i haven’t walked here before. a stretch of about five kilometers uphill, along the typical galician hollow ways, along windy paths through the hills, across meadows, pastures, through little forests. the sun coming up, slowly drying off the early morning sweat, then warming up my skin, muscles and bones. here an aldea, but no coffee, there an aldea, no coffee but a wending machine, then another aldea and a café.
i have difficulty focussing today, so i give in and don’t try to. i go in and order a cortado and a pedazo de pastel, it ends up being a quarter cake basically. enough to share! a good part of my pilgrims’ family comes in: angél & su esposa, pablo de suiza, juan de valencia con su tio josé y su prima loli, las chicas koreanas. angél, who makes every pilgrim he meets look at windows in trabadelo. why? i won’t tell you. you will have to go and find out yourself.
we discuss our plans for the next days and end up practising pilgrims’ hugs. some of us, because this is a good-bye, some of us just in case.
we are now all getting close to the home-stretch. the final stages into santiago.
the rest of today i walk alone again. you never walk alone. my plans for the next days: walk some more, reconcile with myself, trying to get back to a more tranquil state of mind & soul. acceptance. fragments of time. you can’t ever go back to live them differently. walk further. eat some pulpo a la gallega or pulpo á feira - the same thing. so i will eat this plato at least twice. walk until i reach the ocean at the end of the world. be there for others without expectations, returning to practising yoyu.
my cuaderno is now almost full, about 10-12 lines of free space, filling up rather fast. either i stop here, or i’ll need to find an additional notebook. but no worries, just remembered - i have an additional one in my bag. and there is some material in this one, i haven’t yet used. so, i might be back with another post tomorrow.
