| In Burgos I slept in a little later and didn't rush but was still on the way by 7am walking through the cities' west end and then the large municipal park that borders the outskirts. Stopping at a cafe for breakfast I exchanged language lessons with an older waitress and her son before I headed off walking through a new housing complex and into the countryside. One thing I have noticed, at least in this part of the country, there are no sprawling suburbs. The walk out of all the major centres has been an immediate shift from urban to field. Even in the smaller centres the houses are all clustered in the towns or village. The use of land here has evolved over time and with a heavy agricultural culture no fields or arable land seems wasted. Also the towns are elevated with a clear view of the countryside surrounding them. This speaks to the historical threats and the defences the people must have employed to confront them. I haven't seen any of the countryside enclaves of predictable bland McMansions that dominate North American landscapes. As I hit the edge of town I ran into Tewlly an Estonian girl I had met before. She was walking the camino for the second time and over the next hour I got a quick lesson in Estonian history, political systems and life in general. Like many others I have met she was in a transition stage of life changing careers and had come to the camino to walk and think. We entered the town of Tardajos where she stopped for breakfast and I moved on and after a gradual climb came onto the high dry flat Meseta stretching off into an endless horizon. Shortly after I found David sitting on the side of the road under a tree changing his socks. He was having a lot of trouble with his feet. His hiking boots are goretex which just don't breath and were leaving his feet swimming. I told him to chuck them at the first opportunity but he had sentimental attachment to them having used them hiking to Machu Piccu the year before. We walked together and got into a discussion . I had seen a book for sale with a display of many copies back in Logrono of Somerset Maugham's "Impressions in Andalusia" and with all the Hemingway stuff around it got me thinking about mislabelling and the whole perception thing surrounding who ends up where in history. I was wondering why Hemingway should be celebrated as the voice of the lost generation when Maugham clearly and in fact wrote just as much about displacement and seekers than old Ernie. It wasn't even Hemingway who coined the term lost generation but Gertrude Stein and if you stop and look at both of their works Maugham scores big with the Razors Edge and Moon and Sixpence never mind all the short stories. Was it because Maugham was older and a popular seller. Maybe not as fresh as Hemingway who was considered a serious artist because of the shift in writing styles. In the end they are story tellers. Interestingly they were also both in the ambulance brigade during the WW1. In turn I got a lesson in Stephen King whom I haven't read. Everything from The Stand to the Dark Tower series was laid out for me to have a look into. Like I said in a previous blog you get a lot of time to think on the camino. .We stopped at Hornillos de Camino and grabbed lunch, refilled the aqua bottles and set off. A few hours later having left David changing his socks I was walking on a flat plain with nothing in front of me when I came upon a sudden drop into a valley with a small village straddling the road and descent. It was like walking into a spaghetti western but even more so like one made in Argentina instead of Italy. I stopped at the first bar and pushing aside the beads at the entrance went in. The place was spotless and they showed me a bed again in a spotless room with five bunks . I signed in and had a shower did my laundry. By then David, then Tewlly and Ben the Dutchman I had met back in Grano all showed up. There was an Austrian already here. There was a rumour of another place offering both a pool and milkshakes so we went off to see but the pool was exposed to the sun and the water hot and the milkshake machine was a broken. I went back to my bar grabbed a beer and met a Spaniard and Italian girl Teresa who I knew from my time in Cirauqui with the Basque boys. I then got into one those afternoon discussions with Teresa about lit and cinema. Having no common experience and from someone a good twenty years younger and from a totally different continent and environment she matched me blow for blow as we ran the gamut from James Jones novels to the career of Oliver Reed and Sterling Hayden and then the films of Bertolucci and Terence Malick. I was reluctant to break it up but the Spanish fella who was part of the Basque group she had been travelling with was kind of an odd man out on the conversation because of his English and it was both their second last day of walking so I excused myself and went for a nap. When I came back a few American student musicians who seemed to be travelling on bike with their instruments did a dixieland concert entertaining a small but enthusiastic crowd. The bar did a Pilgrims dinner with two sittings and the second sitting was a rambunctious affair with the Italians, a lot of whom were on the last days of their holidays closing the bar down. Wanting to fall off I put on the ipod and drifted away listening to Paul Weller. to be continued |
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1 comment:
You've got such a good writing style. I really get the scene. almost like being there.
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