2025-11-11
A transcription of my diary from the Camino de Santiago.
Tags: travel
<< previousDay 15, Sunday, October 22nd 2023, Cadavedo (30.5km, 387.9km total)
It was still mostly dark out when we left the albergue. Sergio and I happened to leave at the same time, but we separated when I took an Aurora-endorsed shortcut back to the main trail. I stopped at a café, where other pilgrims I knew gradually filtered in: A&W, Mira the Ukrainian, Kobi the Dutch 17-year-old, his Camino Dad Tony, and Sergio. In passing, I thought I heard a local Spaniard mutter "puto blanco" under his breath, which I think would translate to "white bastard"? If he was indeed referring to me, then the meaning was pretty clear. A refreshing change from hearing "Buen Camino" every day.
Aurora left her walking stick (a literal stick) behind in the café. I caught up with her to return it and ended up walking with her and Wesley once again. It was a challenging segment, with hard surfaces and lots of hills, but the scenery was worth it. We walked through forests and crossed over streams. Out of boredom, I picked up some fallen branches and hurled them like javelins. We all laughed when a bird made an indignant squawk just as one of these branches landed among the trees. The coastal landscapes of this segment were among the most beautiful I'd seen on the Camino up to that point.
We arrived, tired, at Cadavedo. I got a room in an albergue (Casa de Peregrinos Covi y Peter) with Sergio, Tony and Kobi. We went to a place called Casino Bar for food, where I had patatas bravas and a veggie burger. Ivano from Sicily joined us. I discovered that he'd done the Camino more than 20 times, and he'd been living outside Italy for so long that he barely considered himself Italian - more a "citizen of the world". Sergio bought shots for everyone. I overheard him and Tony discussing their respective divorces, and both men seemed to feel a lot of pain over it. I was curious to hear more about their experiences, since I hadn't talked to anyone about divorce before, but didn't want to intrude.
For the first time, the approach of Santiago came up in conversation. I felt sad at the prospect of reaching the end, which I guess was a sign of how much I was enjoying the experience, despite all the fretting I was doing over my injuries.
Day 16, Monday, October 23rd, Villapedre (28.22km, 416.12km total)
I was the last one to leave the albergue. I noticed a few insect bites on my feet and hoped they weren't from bedbugs (chinches). Something about bedbugs has always creeped me out.
I stopped at a café to rest, after about an hour of walking, and ordered a tortilla and a cup of black tea. I'd grown to look forward to these tea breaks, and the sanctuary of a warm cuppa. Sergio, Kobi, and A&W caught up with me before long. I continued on with A&W to Luarca, the stop suggested by the Buen Camino app. I wanted to keep walking with A&W, so I followed them to Villapedre, about 12km further. It wasn't as tough as the day before, but my left foot did start to hurt by the end. Along the way we talked about spirituality, recreational drugs, and life plans.
My ankle didn't seem to hurt so much when I was standing or walking, but it was still swollen and tended to be sore in the mornings. I hoped it wasn't a serious injury.
In Villapedre I checked into the hotel El Pinar. I felt conscious of the privilege I had, being able to stay in hotels whenever I wanted more comfort and privacy. Of course, this was all inconsequential compared to the plight of people in Gaza, who were being murdered every day while I was preoccupied by trivialities like insect bites and a swollen ankle.
I spent the evening in bed, keeping my ankle elevated, watching trashy TV, and eating pizza. One of the shows was El Cazador (The Hunter), the Spanish equivalent of The Chase. I was humbled by a Spanish comedy show where I couldn't understand a single word the comedians were saying.
Day 17, Tuesday, October 24th, La Caridad (17.99km, 434.11km total)
I waited until it stopped raining before leaving the hotel, but the wind was still so strong that it nearly knocked me over a few times. I was saddened to see some dairy cows in a barn, separated from their calves by metal fencing and a distance of 100-200m.
While passing through Piñera, the town where A&W and some other pilgrims I knew had stayed the night before, I was greeted by a local man called Jose-Luis. He said he liked to talk with passing pilgrims and take their picture, which I agreed to let him do, though it was a struggle to hold still with all the wind. I felt mildly uncomfortable when he commented on the blueness of my eyes while staring deeply into them. He spoke about how it's a privilege to take someone's picture, and how there's an element of creation in each of us. I tried to be receptive to what he was saying, but there was still a small part of me that never moved on from the contemptuousness of the God Delusion phase I went through as a teenager. I knew I needed to work on being more accepting of other people's beliefs.
A little while later, I stopped in at a shop and chatted to the shopkeeper for a while. She happened to know Jose-Luis, and seemed amused when I recounted the things he'd said to me. We agreed that tiene sus cositas - "he has his little things", which I interpreted to mean "has his peculiarities".
I noticed that my mind tended to wander while I was walking, and I wasn't attentive to my surroundings. It wasn't a problem, as such, but it'd be a shame if I spent the whole Camino daydreaming. That said, I did stop to appreciate the scenery as I left Navia, a town about halfway between Villaprende and La Caridad, which was my final stop for the day.
I arrived at La Caridad without any other occurrences of note, and went to the albergue A Caridá. Basic but clean. I spoke with 3 different Spanish people there. Lots of Spanish practice that day.
Sketch of the typical bar or cafetería along the Camino. A sleepy place. Tiled floor, wooden counter, overly bright lights. Tortilla de patatas and meat sandwiches on display. One type of beer on tap, if any. Usually Estrella. Otherwise, it's 330ml bottles. You just ask for cerveza or vino - no multiple choice here, thank you very much! Old men sitting at the counter, just like you'd see in an Irish pub. They speak in the local language, or they speak Spanish so quickly and with such a strong accent that it may as well be a different language. Sometimes they still wear their work clothes, trousers stained with mud from the fields of the surrounding countryside. Trash TV in the background, and a gambling machine in the corner. Relatively cheap - that day I paid €3.30 for black tea and pain au chocolate. In Ireland it'd probably cost at least €6. In the bathroom, the hand dryer is always broken.
More about prices. Bottles of wine cost €2-10 in the supermarkets. In Ireland, you'd pay €10 for the cheapest bottles of wine at Tesco.
Day 18, Wednesday, October 25th, Ribadeo (21.6km, 455.71km total)
I didn't sleep very well. Got woken up by a mosquito buzzing in my ear. The bathroom had the highest urinal I'd ever seen. Various people entered the room while I was trying to sleep. Torches swung from their necks and flashed in all directions. There was also much rustling of plastic bags, and deafening alarms in the morning.
I left for Ribadeo at 7/8am, before sunrise. It was another day of strong wind. I tried to be more "present", after my reflections of the day before, but it wasn't long before my mind started to wander again.
Walking, shouting into the wind, worrying about my sore ankle. Arrived at the Puente de Santos (Bridge of Saints), a 600m-long bridge that led into Ribadeo. This was the crossover point into the autonomous community of Galicia. The bridge was high above the river below, and so windy that it literally took my breath away. I made it across safely, and was then amused at a cyclist passing me in the opposite direction. He didn't get off his bike for the crossing, and as he moved into the distance I could've sworn I saw him get knocked over by the wind. My phone was dead by this point, so I had to ask random passersby for directions to the hostel.
The hostel was clean, and spacious due to a lack of pilgrims. I had a bunkbed to myself in the corner of the room, which gave me a good deal of privacy. I ate at Kalpa Amodiño, an Indian-Iberian fusion restaurant. Stuffed roti, home-brewed kombucha, and a coconut dessert - all delicious! The server was friendly, and also present was the owner's 10-year-old daughter, who was very cute.
That night I wasted a couple of hours browsing Reddit before going to sleep around 2am.
Day 19, Thursday, October 26th, Granja de Calor (17km, 472.71km total)
A day of heavy rain. I had breakfast with a Czech person, a French woman (who'd cycled all the way from Norway over 5 months), an Andalucian, and a French couple who were doing the Camino by car. All were friendly. I ordered another tea, avoiding the rain for as long as possible. When I did leave, the rain and greyness of the day made it a melancholic walk through the streets. I saw the restaurant from the day before and felt sad that I mightn't ever eat there again, nor pass through Ribadeo itself.
Before even making it out of the city, the rain got so bad that I sought refuge under a café terrace. I ordered 6 churros with chocolate, and yet another black tea, and spent a couple of hours reading my book and enjoying the moody atmosphere and rain sounds.
While sitting there, I was approached by an older American woman from the albergue. We chatted for a while. Her name was Griffin, and she was from New Mexico. Her nickname was "Doc", probably because she had done a history PhD. Among other things, she told me about her denomination of Christianity, the Episcopal Church, and how it was basically the US equivalent of the Anglican Church in England. It has male and female priests, and they can get married. They even had a gay head bishop, their equivalent of the archibishop of Canterbury. However, she did add that this resulted in the departure of some homophobic congregants, who promptly registered at another, more bigoted church. Griffin was on her way to Santiago to volunteer at a place called Pilgrim House, although her intention to walk the whole way had been curtailed by an injury.
I left at around 11am, bidding farewell to Ribadeo and the sea. We'd be walking inland from this point onwards. Didn't see many people. There were woods and ascents. It started to rain again while I was walking through the forest. I hid among the trees in an improvised shelter that someone else had made from branches. I hung my poncho over the shelter like a tarpaulin, and waited for the rain to ease up. Meanwhile, there were two slugs committing obscene acts at my feet, which made me feel like the camera crew in a nature documentary, camped out in a hidden observation post. There was a croaking sound at my back. I must've been half asleep, because I imagined it to be the growling of a mother wolf, protective of her cubs and ready to go for my throat. I didn't humour my delusions by turning around to check, though.
Eventually, I resigned myself to getting wet, because I'd been there for ages and there wasn't even a small patch of blue in the sky. Fortunately, it stopped raining a short while after I set off again.
Around 6pm, after walking for 17km, I arrived at Granja de Calor ("farm of warmth"), a donativo albergue. Aurora had texted me about this place a few hours before. I wanted to walk further, but my phone was running out of battery, so I decided to stop in to charge it and have a rest.
There were 3 German people living there. Freddy and Nicole were the owners, and Andy was their guest. There was also Cami, Andy's dog. Back in Frankfurt, Freddy had been a masseuse / sauna guy and Nicole had been a kindergarten teacher. They had bought this land about 2 years previously, after passing by it while doing the Northern Way. Their land was nestled among a rural community of about 30 people. Their goal was to live self-sufficiently. Andy had stayed with them during his own Camino, and had returned to help out on their farm for a while. During that same Camino he'd found Cami the dog (who was very affectionate) unattended in a forest and had adopted her.
More on the farm. They had learned about farming and homesteading from videos on YouTube. They owned sheep, chickens, rabbits and vegetables. Nicole said she would only eat meat from animals they'd slaughtered themselves. Their neighbours, kind and welcoming people, were curious about them, since it was unusual to see new faces in such a small community, never mind foreign faces. There was an annual festival in the area that attracted about 2000 people. It included a music concert that only started at midnight and carried on well into the early hours. Wolves in the area had preyed on sheep, so they had to keep their animals inside after dark.
I initially sat down just to chat, have a cup of tea, and charge my phone, but I realised that the next stop was over 3 hours away and it'd be completely dark by the time I arrived there. So, I felt I didn't have a choice but to stay. I experienced a brief moment of panic and regret. Skins of slaughtered rabbits hung in the workshop, the farmhouse was grotty and isolated, and I'd be the only pilgrim staying there. The perfect recipe for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Camino Edition. However, a quick bit of internet sleuthing turned up some positive reviews, reassuring me that they weren't crazed killers.
Freddy showed me around the property. They had a barn for their animals, and were in the process of building a sauna that passing pilgrims could pay to use. I then helped to chop vegetables from their garden for dinner. There were 2 woodlice hiding in the onion, and a mouse was hiding in the kitchen somewhere, but the food turned out well. Salted padrón peppers, scrambled eggs mixed with peppers, and bread. It was the usual game of Russian (pepper) roulette, as most of the peppers weren't spicy at all but a few were VERY spicy. I appreciated this meal for its simple but strong flavours.
Freddy shared a line that captured part of their philosophy for the farm: cada uno en su casa haz lo que quiera, or "everyone in their home do what they want". I guess that's not an unusual idea for people who move to the middle of nowhere to escape city life.
That night, I didn't feel comfortable in the bed. The room was dusty and creepy. The main entrance to the house was drafty, and it was very cold. I forgot to ask Freddy and Nicole for a blanket before they went to bed, so I thought I was going to be awake freezing the whole night, but thankfully Freddy came back downstairs for something, a blanket was bestowed upon me when I asked for one, and I managed to get to sleep.
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