to 800 kms later depending on which book you read. The Rolling Stones
song 'this could be the last time' played in my head the whole 18 kms
into town but honestly I don't think it will be. We absolutely loved
the walk, except for some of the fartnsnore barns, and in my albeit
limited experience I would stack Leon against any city in the world
for beauty and interest. It is a stunning place, something that we
were only aware of in a limited way on our lightning first visit at
the start of the walk. The medieval part of town is an amazing mix of
millenium old structure and modern Spanish culture that absolutely
smacks the senses of a Saskatchewan farm boy and beggars belief! Even
after a month and a half I'm still just gob-smacked by the beauty of
the cathedrals, works of art wrought in stone, but also, even the
ordinary buildings aren't ordinary. They are magnificent pieces of
architecture built by people who were thinking of hundreds of years
instead of the 50 years Australian and Canadians think of. The
sidewalks are made of granite or marble! Kind of 'what the hell, we
live here and so will our children's children, so lets just make it
really nice and make it last forever'. You can't help but admire an
attitude like that! I used to get angry when I heard that Australian
councils sent councilors on junkets to Europe to see how things are
done here. Now I see the wisdom, I just hope they come here sober and
with their eyes wide open.
Now that the walking is over I'd like to record some general
impressions and highlights for you and to jog my memory later for my
arm chair travel years. Stepping way back and letting it wash over me,
the impression is obviously of constant movement. Camino life is
pretty simple - walk, eat, sleep. Do it again. Of course the next
level of consciousness is 'where do we walk, how do I find food and
water, is there any beds left in this town, how interesting is the
village'. There is a whole stratigraphy of these intertwined needs and
pleasures and you work through them from the bottom up, necessarily
looking after essentials first, which always seems to include coffee
but ultimately arriving at enjoying the walk and the destination.
The major impression after constant motion is the Spanish people. I
love the Spanish people! No one could not love them. As a whole, they
are genuinely friendly, a kind of innocent friendliness as though they
haven't quite worked out that you can't talk to people who aren't
dressed like you or come from elsewhere so you get 'hello, good
morning' almost everywhere except in the bigger cities. And in the
stores and bars, if you have a go at communicating in Spanish they are
delighted, no matter how bad you butcher it (and I really do!) and
happily work through it with you until you end up with what you were
after. Just amazing people.
Thirdly, a lasting memory will be the ancient medieval cores you find
in all the cities, towns and villages. The narrow winding streets, the
buildings leaning in to grab back some of the space they've
reluctantly given up, the amazing beauty of the old stone buildings
which contrasts with the rustic practicalness of the mud and straw
adobe of the poorer towns or at least towns poor in stone! When you
are walking into the bigger towns there is always a satisfying
'Aahhh!' moment when you pass through the old stone walls into the
ancient core. Suddenly everything feels right. In balance. Maybe
that's the secret to Spanish people's niceness - when life gets to be
too much, they can always go to the old town and go 'Aahhh'!
Another lasting memory will be the beauty of the Spanish countryside.
Crossing the Pyrenees was made special because it was the only
sub-alpine area we went through and because we walked up through the
fog to be above the clouds in bright sunlight. We walked through arid
but irrigated lands through to temperate rain forest carved into farm
land, usually in sight of snow capped mountains. Even in the dreaded
Meseta we found beauty and enough variety to keep us interested. The
ancient Roman roads just blew me away as did towns built by Julius
Caesar!
The farming practices interested us. The farmers live in the villages
and farm houses outside of the villages are rare. We saw plows pulled
by oxen and horses, plows that had a mirror image on top so that the
farmer flipped it over at the end of his field and came back on his
same furrow. The villages are really just collective farm yards with
tractors in the sheds and the BMW cars out on the street! Animals are
kept in yards or sheds beside the houses. In one village we saw a new
born foal just seconds old!
The food, ample, basic and good, just what a hungry perigrino needs
and especially the red wines will be hard to forget.
Finally, the Camino. It is such an amazing organism fed by the wallets
of about 200 pilgrims a day, which provides an incredible support
system for the walker, food, beds and shelter, marked trails, guide
books, spirituality, comradery, rest spots and water fountains, all at
an unbelievably affordable price. it's a tradition that has been
followed for centuries and it's something the Spanish are justifiably
proud of.
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