mrbrianking

We’re on the Oregon Trail. We are not the first ones, of course. In the 1860’s, up to 2000 people a day trekked across here. Just think about it. 2000 people on wagons, horseback and on foot. In one day! It must have been a constant stream, an unbroken line. All heading to a place they knew little or nothing about. What amazes me most, (I’ll have to do some research), is why many of them didn’t just stop. “Let’s stay here. This place looks all right. What in the hell are we going to Oregon for? It’s another four months of dusty, mucky and dangerous bumping across empty plains and scary mountains. And to what!” Well to Oregon, I suppose. But to them, it was just an address on a piece of paper. And not too exact. Oregon! Just that. Adventurous people. And brave.

Driving across Nebraska is a bit like being at sea. Not as wet, of course. What I mean is, you can look around you for as far as the eye can see. There’s not a mountain or hill to be seen. Great oceans of yellow, dried cornfields stretching on and on. It has a beauty of it’s own but there is an unchanging sameness about it. We take a break to call in to the Pony Express depot. One of the few, (probably the only), Pony Express stops remaining. It’s a small (very) log cabin museum and shop now. The service hasn’t operated since 1861, when the telegraph but it out of business.

On to Denver. We arrive a little after dark. The mile high city. There is no sense of it being that high as you approach by road. It must be a gradual incline, spread over a thousand miles. I had expected steep mountainous roads, but no. Anyway, we’re here for a few days, so we rest from driving and go to see the sights. Looking forward to it. Denver Colorado. Show us what you’ve got.

I always thought of Chicago as being way up north and out of the way. In fact, it is due west from Boston and right in line for our coast to coast trip. And so we arrive there on Wednesday evening and settle in for a few days.

My first impressions are that it is a beautiful city. Hard to believe, that a modern, high-rise, busy city could be so carefully, so tastefully, so prettily laid out and structured. There is plenty of open park and recreational space. The river laps right to the edge of the buildings and is an integral part of the living space. Each sky scraper has an individuality that is both attractive and fitting, and the whole place is really a model of how modern high density urban planning should be done.

Enough. We walked the downtown area from top to bottom. We took the guided boat ride. We visited the planetarium and space museum. We went to a comedy club, a blues club, a piano bar. If you want to mix leisure with deep fill pizza, chatty locals, pitchers of beer and a modern city experience, Chicago is the place. Just don’t step off the pavement! The drivers are crazy and pedestrian lights are only used to collect all the bodies in the one place.

We stopped in Erie Pennsylvania. Our journey is west. We left Niagara falls with a plan. The plan is to get to San Francisco in three weeks. That seems doable. We got onto route 90 and drove west.

Erie turned out to be a very pretty town. Well, we only saw the outskirts, but pretty they were. We pulled in to the Glass House motel and went for dinner close by. It was a bar restaurant with an open mic session. It was great. We had good food, listened to some nice music, spent an hour chatting with the local musicians and did a fifteen or twenty minute set with a borrowed guitar. A good night all round.

And a good morning to follow. Back on the road and move on. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What a great place. We only had a couple of hours, but you could easily spend a whole day there. Heavy on the Beatles, the Stones, Elvis, the whole San Francisco and LA Laurel Canyon sets. Plenty of CSNY and lots lots more. We would have stayed longer, but we had Chicago in our sights.

So stay tuned!

When the frost comes to Connecticut, it’s time to move on. Those hot summer days are past. Those warm autumn days are leaving. There’s a wind off the lake. The acorns are falling in their thousands. This morning started with the first frost of the year. That’s the signal. That’s when you know. When the frost comes to Connecticut, it’s time to move on.

By any logical conclusion, this should all mean a move south. But not for us! No, logic has not yet returned from summer recess, from autumn break. In a daring (!), logic defying leap, we head north. Yes, the long term plan is a warmer clime but wait. Not just yet. There is still time for one last throw of the northern dice. We make for Niagara Falls.

Yes, this is where Marilyn Monroe held us in suspense. This is where the three stooges larried, curlied and moed us into farce. This is where, for a hundred years, crackpots have barrelled, boated and highwired themselves into cascading fame or a cold and wet oblivion.

And so it is that I enter Canada. A country that I associate with Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Leonard Cohan, to mention but a few. A country that I associate with the railroad trilogy of Gordon Lightfoot. A country of wilderness and adventure.

Ok, so my introduction to this great land is not exactly arctic exploration or the birth of a new music legend. But it’s exiting for me. It’s Canada and it’s Niagara Falls and I had a great time. The boat trip, the Skylon view, the walk along the falls view. Great. It’s done. Time to move on. Head west.

Airports are interesting places. They are full of entertainment. Very small children provide acrobatic displays, tumbling headfirst over the seats in the waiting area, balancing on top of suitcases – this is particularly good when the cases have four wheels and spontaneously roll off in random directions – and climbing onto and falling off the conveyor belts at check-in. All of this is done, of course, to the ultra high pitch squealed enthusiasm of their siblings. Sure where would you get it?
Then there’s the coffee outlets. These can be particularly engaging. The system is simple. They sell boiling hot coffee in paper cups that are too hot to hold. Pick a good seat, where you can observe the queue, and sit back. The lady with a large carry-on bag, an equally large handbag and a plastic duty-free bag containing a litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire, a small bottle of something called “Destiny”, and three large bars of Toblerone, one broken open with the silver foil sticking out in jagged folds. She adds to this burden, a chicken and sage stuffing sandwich, packed in a triangular box and held precariously between her little finger and her left hip, and goes to the end of the counter to await her regular americano. When it arrives, she picks it up with her right hand, where it joins the duty-free bag, and has gone three steps from the counter before she realises that this is damn hot. She enters the first stages of shock. Her eyes open wide. Her mouth opens suddenly and she pants short and loud bursts of breath. She looks around desperately for somewhere to put it down. Five more steps to a flat surface. Bang. Down it goes in desperation as the bottle of Bombay Sapphire clatters against the stainless steel table frame and hot coffee splashes over her hand. Over the next twenty five seconds, as the pain recedes, the panic subsides and the spilt coffee is dried, the embarrassment sinks in. The chorus of, “Oh you poor dear”, “Are you all right?”, “Can I help?”, only make matters worse. Red faced and red handed, she slips away to hide in quiet oblivion. 
Ah, the joys of airports. I have WOW Airlines to thank for my extended stay. My flight, scheduled to leave at 12.10 is now predicting boarding around 14.40. Oh good! Lots more to look forward to.

The morning was dressed in a heavy fog. It was as though the Camino was trying to hide it’s way. Reluctant to allow us to finish. I had prepared for sunshine, T shirt, sun cream, shorts. After an hour on the trail, I had to put my coat on. Mind you, I took it off again half an hour later. But it was lovely on those forest trails in the morning mist.

After lunch, we came over the final hill in glorious sunshine and after 800 kms, 29 days and a thousand stories, we walked into Santiago de Compostela. ‘Tis done! I had never doubted that we would get here, but somehow, I’m amazed that we did. And we did!

It’s been a wonderful journey. To all of you who have looked in here from time to time, thank you. Thank you for joining us and being part of it. I hope you have enjoyed following our Way. Bon Camino.

And so it has come to this. We are in Salcida. We stopped 27 kms short of Santiago de Campestela. After 28 days of hiking across Spain. After the Pyranees mountains. After the vineyards of LA Rioja. After the plains of Castilla y Leon. And after the beautiful mountainous farmlands of Galicia. It has come to this. Tomorrow we will arrive in Satiago. This wonderful experience, adventure, pilgrimage, journey, study, escape, will play out it’s final scene.

And what was it all for? To study blisters, cramps and arch support? To test how far we can get with only two sets of clothes? To see the countryside of Spain? To make new friends and enjoy good company? To carry out a detailed analysis of Spanish beer? To test our bodies to the limit and to test our will and resolve beyond that? To seek something deeper and more spiritual?

While I might have started out to just have a long hike, I believe in the end, that it was all of those things. A little of some. A lot of others. Anyway, it was some of all. Time will tell how the mind resolves it and the memory recalls.

In the meantime, we will arrive in Santiago tomorrow and I, for one, will be satisfied

You know those guys who drive around in vans with public address systems screaming about election campaigns or advertising dutch furniture, or something like that? Well, one followed us today! You kind of expect them around suburban areas, or where there are a lot of people to impress or engage. You don’t really expect to find them on lonely, empty country lanes. That’s where this guy chose to do his broadcasting. There we were, walking along a muddy track, between rows of hedges, in quiet farmland, when we hear, quietly at first and growing steadily louder, the sound of a campaign in Spanish. I’ve no idea what was being said but it was very enthusiastic. And besides, if he would come all the way up that isolated track just to get my vote ….. hey, the boy deserves some return! He passed on. We hiked on. Half an hour later, on an equally empty track, what do we hear creeping up behind us…………. you guessed! The same van! The same cry for support! Dedication, I call it! Dedication!

The camino has changed! All things must, I know. But it has changed. For weeks I saw it differently. It is a litany. A litany of steps. You set out in the morning and walk. You put one foot in front of the other and then repeat the procedure. This goes on. You move on, it matters not where. It is a mantra of movement. The movement is regular and constant. The body responds. The mind wanders. It fills it’s time and goes to where it wants to go. The litany and the mantra. That is the camino. That was the camino. It has changed!

The final few days have arrived and I tend to think about the end. About the destination. About completing. This was far from my mind before. Now it stares me in the face. People who before talked only in terms of wanderlust, now talk about arriving. A shift has occurred. Also, the people who have come to do a single week have blended in. They look much cleaner than the rest of us. They smell much better than the rest of us. We are outnumbered by the new and beautiful. The camino has changed! Maybe it’s time to finish. We have only 57 km’s left. I’m beginning to think about the end.

Well somebody has been keeping all this beautiful Galician countryside a secret. This morning, we had a lovely walk for about an hour and a half, down to the town of Sarria. This is an interesting spot from the pilgrim’s point of view. In order to receive a Camino Certificate, you must walk the last 100 km’s to Santiago, (or cycle the last 200 km’s). Sarria is 110 km’s from the end, so it is the principle starting point for those just wishing to complete the qualifying distance. Because of this, huge numbers come to Sarria by bus and train and the stream of pilgrims coming through from the east, meets up with this new stream. Result, a much busier Camino from here on.

We joined in for a most beautiful day’s walking, in nice sunshine, through the aforementioned lovely countryside. We promised ourselves a beer stop, 5 km’s from Portomarin, (our target for the day). We picked out the spot in the guidebook and it was our little inducement to keep going. We arrived there tired, thirsty and expectant. No bar! No beer! We left there tired, thirsty and disappointed.

Ah well, we did get to Portomarin and to our well earned beer, even if we had to climb the city steps and enter the stone arch. Worth it in the end.

Let’s scotch one widely held belief right now. This is a myth supported by half of the western world, and all the rest of it, for all I know. One for which George Bernard Shaw, (a fellow Irishman and Dubliner, by the way), is somewhat responsible. It is this. That the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plane. Yes! Let’s scotch this right now. We walked the plain in Spain for over a week. It was dry and dusty. So! The rain in Spain falls mainly on me! And it does so in great quantities and with unceasing enthusiasm. It gets under my gortex coat. It creeps down the inside of my collar. It goes down my back and arms and it fills my shoes. That’s where the rain in Spain goes.

Having accepted this reality, let’s look at another misconception. In the dim and distant past, a miracle took place in the church of O’Cebriero. I’m not doubting this. Let me go on. The popular belief is that the miracle took place to put down a haughty priest who was dismissive of a devout peasant. The correct version I believe, is that it took place so that future pilgrims would have to climb 700 meters (that’s about 2,200 feet), over 6 kms, in the rain, at the end of a day’s hiking, because the scene of every miracle has to be added to the camino. And it was damn cold too.

On the other hand, Wednesday morning dawned clear and bright. Cold. Very cold, but clear and bright. Against all expectations, the sun stayed out all day. The temperatures rose. The day became most pleasant. So much so, that when we got to Triacastela, and it was only 2pm, we decided to leave a group of friends, sitting at a street side cafe, and hike on. A most beautiful afternoon’s hiking, though forest paths, farm tracks and across lovely pastureland. All in glorious sunshine. An afternoon from heaven. All is forgiven.

A week ago, I had lost all sense of where I was. I was just walking. Day after day. Just walking. Yesterday, when we crossed into Galicia, I noticed that the local government had put up milestones, (well actually kilometre stones, or in fact, half kilometre stones). So now, every half kilometre, we get a reminder as to exactly how far we have left to go to Satiago. We will never be lost again!! I think I preferred not to know. It’s 118, by the way!