My Camino Day July 29

First Breakfast and Second Breakfast

My Camino Day July 29 began with leaving Heidi’s Place, where Heidi had served a modest breakfast. Leaving Heidi’s, I discovered that the Taberna Vella, just across the path, was open and a bit more to eat, plus my first sello of the day, drew me in. It was a mass of people jockeying for position to order and find a seat. The crowd diminished my Taberna breakfast ambitions to an additional quick coffee and a hard boiled egg

I also discovered that the Way was absolutely overflowing with perogrinos and perogrinas. I was not on the del Norte any more.

Hiking along found me in an introspective, and occasionally fanciful, mood. The ever-decreasing distance between me and the Cathedral was on my mind. Why? The reason was the same one that slowed my steps as I approached Zumaia on August 18 2018: I didn’t want to get there. My awareness of this end to my Journey – only a symbolic end but an end, nonetheless – weighed on my mind.

I was not ready for my Camino Journey to end and I knew it.

I planned a short hike that day. There were multiple reasons that only began with not wanting to arrive in Santiago. I had plenty of time to reach Pensión O Códice at about the same time my wife would arrive on August 1st. No need to hurry. The memory of the sciatic pain that hit so hard on July 21st (a post yet to be written) was strong. The reality of the point the doctor at the Centro de Salud in Arzúa made while helping me with the pain was obvious. Perhaps a man of my age who suffers from sciatica might be well advised to find adventures less physically demanding than hiking el Camino while carrying a backpack.

Ageism! My age has nothing to do with it. The sciatica is a legitimate point. The backpack weighs a mere 7 kilograms and has a frame that transfers almost all of that directly to my hips.

Stone Walls

Very shortly, more old stone walls appeared. They provided more fodder for my fascination with the old stone walls in Galicia. These witnesses to decades, if not centuries, of pilgrims passing en route to Santiago seemed more and more important to me, more significant.

Those walls are like us, I thought, like me. Some new and strong like those youthful peregrinos who pass me with such ease. Then there are the ones like me, a bit weak with age, but continuing in our role in this infinitely complex universe. Still more speak to the dissolution that awaits us all as that implacable enemy, time, gradually overcomes us.

Maintenance and a bit of care in the use of those walls extends their lives. So it is for me with exercise and the care of good doctors. My battle against time and to extend my life as I want to live it goes on.

Second Breakfast, or Was It Lunch?

An hour after leaving the albergue, I noted in my journal “Stopping for breakfast, or lunch, after 2.6 miles of easy hiking. This is at least half of my distance today.” The witch that greeted me on entering the very busy restaurant seemed happy to see me. The food was good, I collected my second sello of the day, and returned to the Way.

My Camino Day July 29 2023 included at least one small flight of fancy. Beyond my budding identification with ancient stone walls, I came upon another aging entity, this time a tree that, somehow, reminded me of the story of how Nimue trapped Merlin in an old oak tree on the Île de Sein. Here I saw an aging guardian of pilgrims, an hospitalero, perhaps, rather than Merlin. Is he watching over our progress as we, young and old alike, each continue our personal Journey along the Way?

I like to think so.

The short day’s hike ended at Albergue La Corona, a nice place beside the road, but with no town nearby. There was, however, a nice restaurant, the Casa Tia Teresa Bar-Pensión, only a few hundred feet away. There, I enjoyed a delicious dinner with another peregrino.