August 26th to Hospital de Orbigo,
I got off to a very quick getaway leaving the albergue just after 5:3o am. Just as was leaving one of the Irish Johns whispered goodbye as I left the dorm. I had known the two Irish johns for only a few days but they were already good friends as were a lot of the hikers along the trail. Maybe it’s the common interest or even the common goal but there is an intensity springing from it. I walked towards the edge of the city and by the time I came to the river on the outskirts I noticed a young lady obviously lost trying to figure out the way. I pointed out the right way and she fell in walking with me. It was her first day and she was from Norway. She was carrying a huge pack and didn’t seem to know about the trail blazes. We walked together for about half an hour talking and then the weight from her pack was giving her trouble so she asked it was safe for her to stop as we were in an industrial suburb and I said yes people would be coming to work shortly and there were already other hikers in sight.
At Valverde de la Virgin the first town out of Leon you are given an option of a longer field route or the much shorter route alongside the busy highway on the way to Astorgia a major pilgrim centre where the routes merge on the way to Santiago. I grabbed an espresso and headed out on the longer option taking the field route and immediately fell away from the road music and smells. After a kilometre or to I crossed on another highway empty by North American standards and descended into a village where in found the square filled my water bottle and had some fresh fruit for breakfast. Walking out of town I was greeted by a pup or certainly what appeared to be a young dog despite having what could only be described as a face of the ancients. I seemed to be walking through a series of ravines none of which were visible from the flat Meseta. By the second descent I was getting concerned because my companion was showing no signs of leaving. Last year laided up with Seacycle in Medregal in Venezuela I had been adopted by a young female pup much to the amusement of the French cruisers. The situation there in the yard with the dogs was deplorable but unfixable with the way the locals treat the dogs. It was heart wrenching to leave with the young dog on the dock whining but at least two buddy boats Nautilus and Vagabond were there to pick up the pieces. Not wanting a repeat I tried to shoo the pup away but he or she wasn’t having it. In the end I had to resort to throwing stones and it finally left.
After a couple of hamlets I finally found myself out in the fields with long vista stretching to the south and off to the north the mountains curving down to the west where I was headed. I passed through a couple of small villages over the morning and at one of them sure enough I came across David and then losing him to a sock change I had a Irish lad fall in with me who was a physics major. We got caught up in a discussion about climate change. The conversation started with my observation of all the frogs in the ditches that seemed to be doing all right despite global warming and then it fell apart as I confessed to not be convinced that we were directly responsible or had a solvable problem. Well that destroyed all my credibility with him as he was fervent in his beliefs as well as the expertise of the scientific community using the moon shots as the litmus test for creditably. Not wanting to escalate the argument I didn’t bring up that according to the experts the earth used to be the centre of the universe, then flat. Or the remedy of bleeding, use of thalidomide, ureaformaldihyde foam, trickledown economics or the Hubble telescope, etc, etc.
My shin was starting to develop a worrisome hurt so I decided to call it a day and headed into Hospital de Orbigo. I think in hindsight it was the road construction of loose stone and gravel, more of a pit run with disportionate stone sizes causing an uneven trail that did the shin in. At the entrance to the town I found one of the longest medieval bridges at seventeen spans. This town sports a famous folktale that has a knight suffering from unrequited love vowing to wear an iron collar till he has fought a thousand knights to show his depth of his true affections for his muse. Evidently this was one of the stories that inspired Cervantes to write Don Quixote. Personally all I could think was the guy had more than rejected love blues wrong with him to fight a thousand times wearing an iron collar but that another discussion. I found a private albergue across from the municipal albergue that was very nice, checked in and went for dinner that night with a Flemish gentleman who gave me the dirt on the Flemish and French problem. It wasn’t the first time on this trip I have listened to aspirations of separate nation hood and it is putting my own countries issue in a different perspective. Back at the albergue the night keeper was into the local Ouzo and insisted I take a shot which immediately restarted some hair growth somewhere. On that note I headed for my bunk and turned off, tuned in and dropped off to some Fred Neil on the IPod.
To be continued