Where to start?!!! Firstly, please don´t worry if there is little news, the difficulty is that there are very few opportunities to use the internet. I do promise that if something difficult happens, then I will make sure that there are telephone calls to Australia and England - let alone Mark´s famous rule ´no news is good news´! This is being written from Portugualete, the stop after Bilbao (which was the worst place I have been to so far).
I have now been walking for seven days and have quickly learnt that we don´t talk in terms of kilometres, only of hours of walking and the difficulties faced. And what a lot of difficulties there are! The first challenge is finding the yellow ´fleches´(arrows) which are SUPPOSED to indicate the correct Camino (and someone seems to have decided that the Camino must always take the most challenging and the steepest path) and which are often very difficult to spot, and the major challenge is the different surfaces on which one walks (or hobbles, in my case). Ashphalt and pavements are hard, the mediaeval roads (patterns of bricks laid at different angles) are a struggle, the cobble stones bend your feet in all kinds of directions but hardest (for me) are the dirt paths up and down the mountainsides which turn into clay baths with the rain. And on that point, I have news for whoever said the ´rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain´- it has rained every day that I have been walking - sometimes with a wind that whips the rain into your eyes and lifts the green hunchbacked nun´s poncho in swirling chaos, catching on the brambles. The only day that has been very sunny was yesterday - not good, since that was a very difficult walk of more than 30 kilometres from Guernica to Bilbao - with some of the steepest sections I´ve had to do so far.
My left foot has remained painful all week but has eased from giving the impression of walking on a grapefruit, to walking on a rolled up sock to walking on a pencil. I just have to step out boldly and, again in Mark´s words, ´get on with it!´.
In contrast to the Camino Frances which everyone tells me is so busy (two British cyclists crossed sections the other day and said that at points there was virtually a procession of pilgrims hurrying from one albergue to another), the route remains very peaceful and, apart from that first day, I´ve walked entirely alone. Even though it´s only the first week, I am already aware of a much needed quietening of mind, an entering into silence. During the first few days, my mind was full of busy thoughts and observations, lots of questions too - especially the ones which continually plagued me in Australia, ´why did Mark get leukaemia? why did he die? was it because of me?´- and now there´s just a stilling of those questions and instead an awareness of, not even a conscious thinking about, his spirit. I don´t mean that I feel his presence - people keep telling me I must know he´s with me, and I just don´t - but I mean that I know his mind, if that makes sense. I´m understanding more about his love of physical pursuits (so much more than an interest in sport), and about the way he went through the illness. I´ve also thought a lot about our wedding(s) and the fact that that was a sign of hope for us and for the community, that we would somehow remain united. And now I´m certain that I will see him again, even if it´s only one of those oxygen-deprivation instances at the moment of death that cynics talk of, I know I will see him again. I have cried a great deal as I walk along, and it seems as though it comes from deeper within each time. A benediction.
It´s that awareness of the spirit of Mark that really sustains me on this road, that and - this is no exaggeration - all the people who are thinking of me and praying for me. There have been some times when I have wondered how I can go on (especially when I realise that I have only walked an eighth of the way so far!) - and each time, there´s some kind of extra strength that comes from somewhere. And sometimes it can even be quite unreal - for example, yesterday at one of the (many!) points when I was struggling, I saw a woman in the park who looked exactly like Rose taking a walk on the Weald, and it just gave that little extra spur.
Although I´ve walked alone, I have met some interesting people! There´s a young Italian couple that I call Joseph and Mary because I first met them when they wearing their voluminous rain ponchos and carrying a tiny dog as though it was a baby. He has a wispy beard and is very protective of ´Mary´who is rather fragile and says very little. Mary carries one of those circular tents on her back, which looks for all the world like a set of angel´s wings. The couple obviously have very little money and I´ve found them several times fast asleep at different times of the day, curled up together in church porches. Then there´s a middle-aged heavily jowled Jesus (and that´s his real name!) - whom I kept meeting on the road over the first three days before he returned home. He only speaks Spanish and my Spanish is lamentable (let alone the fact that it´s mostly Basque that is used here) - but twice he just happened to be there when I needed directions and once he gave me a glass of wine while I was waiting for the albergue to open. He wears a tee shirt with the silhouettes of two mountaineers with a caption that includes the word ´memorial´. I think I´ve got this right (you can imagine how we communicated with hands, facial expressions and very limited words) - he had a girl friend who died 11 years ago and they walked the mountains for her in memory. I showed him Mark´s picture (as I tend to show everyone, to be honest) and he told me (I think) that the Camino would bring peace.
Then there´s been the young Australian born French girl I call ´the bearded prophetess´. She is very slim and has the most haunting dark eyes and very fine long dark hair that is braided to her waist - and, presumably because of a hormonal problem, a thick moustache of fine dark hair, and a beard that is several inches long. She has a beautiful fluting voice with a very precise English accent. Unfortunately, after only two days, and despite the fact that she walked the Camino Frances last year, she has had to return home because of the pain in her legs. We had a long talk about this - the poor girl had started the walk after her autistic brother had been put in a psychiatric hospital for some days after attacking her mother and herself and she knew that the tension she had felt then, had become part of her walk. She left a beautiful card in my pack after our talk. There are several others I´ve met who have already had to return home or stop walking - young people a great deal fitter than me - and it´s almost as though it´s not their time for the Camino.
The routine of the day has been pretty similar - up and dressed in the dark at about 6am (although there was one morning when I got dressed, took my rucksack to start walking and then discovered that it was only 2.00am!), walk throughout the day (I try and stop every hour or so to check my feet and drink water), arrive at the albergue hopefully by 4.00pm, wash items of clothing (so simple with one set on, one set off!), eat something if not too tired, go to Mass and then sleep. While the albergues differ greatly in appearance, the set up is very similar - at least 10 bunk beds in a room, males and females in together, usually two showers and two toilets between all of us. Some albergues have "kitchen facilities" (a tap), others have nothing. The best albergue I´ve stayed in, apart from the private one at Orio which was beautiful, was a Carmelite convent at Zumaiya. That was amazing - the sisters had been there since the sixteenth century and only left in March of this year. There´s was a closed order and while there had been some changes since Vatican ll, they remained very private. Apart from the rooms set up with bunk beds, the building was exactly as used by the old women. Fran, the hospitalier, used to go to Mass with the sisters when he was a little boy and he took me on a guided tour of the building. Just incredible. Two sections in particular: the ´cemetery´- a small room with the refectory on one side and the storage shed for potatoes on the other. The bare dirt floor was covered by wooden boards and there were 15 numbered divisions which could be lifted once unlocked with a huge metal key which hung on a hook by the door. The nuns had no names. They had an assigned letter of the alphabet for ´the outside world´and a number for the 'inside world´. On death, a coffin would be fetched down from the top floor (kept in a room next to the novice cells), the body washed and placed inside, the wooden boards lifted, the remains of the previous occupant removed (the bones then put through a hole high up in the wall, falling between the 'cemetery´and the potato room), and the new coffin put in its place. Fran commented on how matter of fact the women were about death and how, on his tour before taking the building over for the albergue, the mother superior (aged 6
and her companion (aged 80) had joked about how they had wanted to try out the place, to see what it would feel like to be put there! The other part that was special - something the sisters referred to as the ´tronella´- the throne. A tiny room containing a chair and stool, next to the mezzanine area where the nuns would watch the mass (so that they would not be seen by the people coming to mass). Fran got very emotional talking about this room. He said that for him it was when he first understood that the spiritual life is not about rules and regulations - that these are externals only. He had understood that the women would help each to deepen their relationship with God and that at different times a woman might ask her sisters to allow her to spend a few days in this room in contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament, completely isolated with her meals left outside and designated breaks for the toilet. This convent, by the way, was also the place that I actually got to sleep in a room by myself because there were only four of us there - Jesus, and two wonderful German students - who returned home the next day because of their pain.
Peter Faulkner - you have been much thought of! Apparently there are some remarkable geological sites here - the word ´flysches´keeps cropping up and, so I´m told, the area is of international significance. Even I have noticed the strata of rock as I´m walking, and am wishing that I was a better student of yours!
Catholicism here has a different face than in Australia! I have met some people who absolutely hate the Church - one very drunk Spanish man in a taverna, where I had stopped for a coffee at 10am - grasped hold of my arm and spent twenty minutes telling me how the Church was false, priests are money-grabbers and the rules are wrong. Others, less emotional, have told me that there is a rigidity here - one person told me (and I had to restrain myself from laughing, thinking of the lovely Jesuits I have met like Frank Brennan and Greg O´Kelly) that I mustn´t forget that the Jesuits started here - and it´s for that that the Church is still like the Inquisition. In fact, the Inquisition certainly doesn´t seem to have stayed in the historry books here. I have to admit I´ve found the masses painful. Not because they´re in Spanish or Basque, but because there is such a heaviness about them. The churches are full every evening - but mostly old women and a few obviously reluctant grandchildren. The buildings themselves are vast with the very ornate decor (I can´t remember what you call those big structures behind the altar) - lots of gold, lots of rolling eyes and lots of martyr´s blood. And they smell of death.
Having said that, I saw the most beautiful church in the world coming in Mekines the day before yesterday. The church is octoganal and built around three very large rock formations - sorry, Peter, I know I should know the correct terms! - with a plaster statue of San Miguel in the centre - as though he is a hermit. A very simple altar and plain cross. Absolutely stunning.
Well, that´s enough for today! Yesterday´s walk was terrible (in fact the man at the albergue that night told me that most people take two days to it), today´s was only about 22 kms but seemed to go in circles and there was the usual climbing and descending. I have seen so many beautiful scenes, however - this is such a beautiful country. Still thinking a lot about the garden - it is really noticeable than in the places where people are still cultivating small plots of land, there seems to be a more gentle and healthier spirit. And where people live in these very very tall blocks of flats, with washing hung out of the windows and the constant noise from passing traffic, there are ugly shouts and a lot of tension. And I haven´t even mentioned the bloody fiestas - do the Spanish EVER stop having fiestas???!!! I only say this because it means that I can´t buy food and there are a lot of drunks around. One of the ugliest mornings I experienced was in leaving Deva (I think it was there - I get confused) - there were to be bulls running through the street at 8.00am and by 7.30am there was a really nasty atmosphere in the town - a lot of drunks on the streets, the bands playing loudly, children being brought by their parents to watch the bulls - and you could almost smell the fear and confusion that those bulls would experience. It was truly horrible. By 8.00am I was high above the town, in the mountains, and could hear the cheers and jeers.
