This morning I fear I have been blessed with the scourge of the Camino… Bedbugs!  I don’t see any bites yet, but there are two small dots of blood on the back of my shirt …rats!  So on top of a little drama that is going on, I now have to deal with this…at my next stop I need to make sure they have a washing machine.

I decided to set off on my own today.  This was my biggest fear, to walk alone… I’m sure my angels had a hand in this….

 But as I leave the albergue at 7am, with the sun getting ready to rise over the mountain, streaks of pink in the sky, I have a sense of exhilaration and freedom that I have conquered this fear…to be by myself in the dead quiet of the early morning, broken only by the chorus of birdsong is pure heaven. No trace of fear.  The country lane between fields reminds me of the English countryside.

As I pick up my pace, after 30 minutes or so, I travel through the next village and now begin to see other pilgrims heading out on the trail…it’s certainly comforting to have others to follow to be sure I don’t get lost.

Spain is not flat!  That is an understatement… The uphill today  was brutal, and not only in the mountains, the villages are not much better…thank God the scenery is so beautiful.  At one point I was going steadily up a fairly steep hill for at least a mile…I rounded a corner to see the short, but ridiculously steep mother of a finale (see picture) … A few 4 letter words came to mind as I stopped and sighed …then in a beautiful act of kindness, an old Spanish man helped a pilgrim cyclist,  who had come to a stop on the hill, and could just go no further, push his bike to the top …of course there were more hills to follow, there always are…

Sometimes as you look into the distance and see your destination it is daunting to realize how much further you still need to go…today, a village perched on a hill like a fortress, as I got closer, it’s beauty was stunning.  As I walked into it I realized why you don’t see obese Spanish people…(see picture)… The angle on the streets feel like 45 degrees.

I had planned to go further today, I was making good time …. But as I turned a corner and there thank God was a village, I made the decision to stay.  Thank goodness there was a room, because my body was all of a sudden exhausted.  I washed all my stuff, then leaned out of my window to hang it, still a common practice here.

It’s the small things… A hot shower, getting the bottom bunk, eating at a table that doesn’t wobble, finding what you need in your backpack on the first try without having to empty out the whole damn thing….My life has been reduced to this…like a temporary ‘get out of jail free’ card.