The Meseta, but more so.

Here, then, is the real Meseta. Hontanas to Castrojeriz, which huddles around the base of an imposing hill in the middle of the valley, is much of what came before - gently rolling hills, rocky outcrops, thistle verges and eagles overhead. I pass some locals ferreting about in the swampy ditch alongside some farmland. I lean in closer and see that they are methodically filling up a wet plastic bag with snails. After Castrojeriz, however, and over the top of Alto de Mostelares, the plain stretches out wide and endless before you. No shade, no deviation, no sound except the crunch of boots on dusty road and occasional pilgrim chatter, though that too seems to be swallowed by the endless blue above. 

For most of the time this meditative atmosphere holds, although at one point I attempt to capture the grand sweep of the plain ahead and in the video pick up an Irish group, one of whom wants to take a picture. “Let me go down the hill some, save me bending over,” he says. “Sure you do that a lot, don’t you Dave?” comes the reply. 

Here’s how my digital detox is going - I spend most of my time talking or singing to myself, often attempting to mimic the accents of people I’ve passed and spoken to. I chunter under (or over) my breath, describing things I see, dictating things I’m going to write, trying to recall the lyrics to well-worn songs. SIlence is a struggle. I don’t think it’s getting in the way of self-actualisation though. It’s barely conscious. Thoughts unspooling. I try to avoid doing it when anyone is in earshot. Word spreads fast up and down the Camino and I’d hate to be downgraded from “the Brit” to “the Brit who walks around muttering to himself all day”. 

In Frómista I have no cash for coffee so I pay the full 10 euro minimum on the card and say I’ll pay for the next pilgrim’s drink. This almost immediately causes chaos as the owner has to explain to a man who speaks neither English or Spanish that his coffee is free because the man who is trying not to make eye contact paid for it. This good deed is paid back a few kilometres later, when the card machine breaks and I have no cash. A Romanian couple steps in to pay for me. This is what you’d have to call a Camino Experience; things of this nature happen every day. . 

I left for Frómista before dawn, though as I return to my notes I have no idea why. I think the idea just came over me. Waking up extraordinarily early is normal for pilgrims, especially in June as the heat becomes very punishing very quickly. Some use head torches, but this morning the moon is enormous and the glow on the horizon is already spreading. Ditches run alongside the fields and they are filled with frogs, who you never see during the daytime but you hear them now, sudden barks and trills from only a couple of metres away, far louder in the twilight than you expect. Birds on a stretch of canal too, their nests somewhere in the rushes, take the opportunity to fill their lungs. A tall line of poplars would provide shade if the sun was anything more than a glow, so instead they are tall, stately shadows in the murk. 

In the event there is no heat. There is even a little bit of rain, and my poncho gets its first airing since I bought it. Sascha the German gives a friendly wave, points at the soggy sky, and says, “It is a little bit of home for you!” It is true. I am from the wet island. 

In Carrión de los Condes I stay in a convent which appears to be staffed entirely by cheerful nuns in their early 20s. It would be unfair to accuse nuns of flirting but they are extremely chirpy and cheerful, in marked contrast to almost every other nun I’ve ever encountered. Beyond the nuns there is also a throng of Italians who will be alongside me on the trail for what feels like forever, ruddy and loud and middle aged. No fear of stereotypes here - they criticise my pasta-making but it then devolves into an intra-Italian dispute about which particular region this dish or that comes from, hand gestures fired rapid across a tiled kitchen. 

Outside in the square I see a young nun approach a man with an electric scooter to ask how it works. It ends up with her having a go on it, and she is soon whizzing delightedly around the fountain, habit billowing out behind her and sensible shoes clamped down. I don’t attend the pilgrim mass because I am labouring over the pasta but I am informed that one of the two priests (dressed in grey sackcloth held together with a stretch of rope; arrived on foot) spends the first part of the service taking selfies. 

The next day contains the longest stretch without any towns, taps or signs of civilisation: 17.2km from Carrión de los Condes to Calzadilla de la Cueza. Carrión is a good sized town but Calzadilla is the kind of Spanish Camino pitstop they mass-produce in a barn in Galicia somewhere. Everyone has been waiting for this big stretch but in the event it’s fine - the day is grey, the way is a slog but uneventful, there’s even a food van set up by an industrious local to capture all the pilgrims who are ready for a stale pastry and a cortado. 

The most exciting incident of the 17.2km happens here: a man with a guitar begins bellowing out some sort of Spanish devotional song - at about 9am, mark you - like he’s singing at gunpoint for his life. Everyone at my table winces as one as he hits the high note. I wonder whether he is enjoying the performance either. Perhaps every day he picks up the guitar with weary determination, firm in the knowledge that he’s the only person holding this thing together. Making memories. Santa Maria, one more time. 

Let’s go back a step: today I made a huge mistake which would not make itself known until I arrived at my albergue for the night. Across the Camino there are luggage transfer services which enable you to send your big bag ahead by van and walk with a light day bag. I manage to fuck up this simple service, so here’s what happens: I arrive in Moratinos after another long, hard day, with just a light bag containing water bottle, pilgrim credential and sandwich, to find that my bag has not arrived. No change of clothes, no towel, no sleeping bag, no charger. 

It’s a shame because the albergue is one of the best I’ve stayed in. Owned by an Italian man called Bruno, it has a cold foot-fountain waiting on arrival, a lawn scattered with deck chairs, a trellis covered in climbing roses. A line of willow trees shed cottony fluff which drifts down through the evening sun. A wood pigeon coos. Bruno serves Italian food outside with the panache you expect, rattling off jokes in English and Italian. There is cold wine and carbonara served in large plastic bowls to be served at the table. 

For my dessert I choose limoncello, which smells like bad toilet cleaner but tastes like good toilet cleaner.

I do my best to enjoy this all, but here’s my situation: tonight I will sleep in the same clothes which I walked in, stiff with sweat. I will nurse my last dregs of phone battery. I will have several stressful translated exchanges with the luggage transit firm who are, for my money, unnecessarily sarcastic. The man in the bunk above listens to loud videos on his phone and I do not have my earplugs. I have no toothpaste so I borrow some sort of toothpaste mint tablet from Jake, who is from Dallas, very amiable, and wears those tiny narrow reflective sunglasses which I associate with people who drive trucks which they refer to as “rigs”. 

I leave at dawn again the next morning, but not by choice. I wake up at 5am and, covered only by my own shirt which stretches across shoulders or legs but not both, it is too cold to go back to sleep. There is no shower. There is nothing to brush my teeth with. The dawn preparations are simple. I climb out of bed, I pick up my bag and my stick, I walk out of the door. If it was cold inside the dorm, it is colder out. I walk faster to try and get my pulse working. Today the sunrise frames a jagged line of wind turbines, as yet unmoved by the wind. 

The growing daylight reveals a cloud formation I couldn’t name, a single long streak tapering into fluff like that left behind by an aeroplane, only this aeroplane would have been large enough to block out the sun. The clouds are up there all night doing who-knows-what. I can’t decide if it’s sinister or comforting to know they’re up there while we sleep, shifting into new shapes and combinations, unseen but for the occasional patch of moonlight. Perhaps every night they’re sending nocturnal messages with no-one to read them. 

I have learned to walk without headphones, which is a laughable achievement but it still counts. For a long time I was convinced that it wasn’t possible. If they were broken or out of charge I’d have to walk with my phone speaker clamped to my ear on the way to Aldi so I didn’t have to experience a moment of independent thought. I’d long blamed this on various diffuse miseries but in retrospect that strikes me as an easy excuse to cover up for the far more obvious issue: chronic attention issues derived from the mobile phone. Stripped of podcast, music and audiobook I find what should always have been obvious: the company of my own mind isn’t too frightening. In fact I would even recommend it. 

I started walking in early May in France. Spring sun is bright, sharp and penetrating. The crispness of the morning fights a game contest against it until at least 11am. The tickle of sweat is if not a surprise at least an event, a sign of creeping summer which chills again as soon as you stop in the shade for a minute. Summer sun in Spain is the whole sky, a bidirectional world, the baked and the baker. It starts early and it doesn’t stop. It is a flat blue rock pressing down on your shoulders, broken up only by scattered shade and the occasional sawing buzz of one of the colossal purple bees which frequent the flowers. But I am an Englishman and I am abroad. Bake me as long as you want, I will never complain. My last words will be those of Giles Corey: more weight.

So I walk, clothes travel-stained and increasingly fetid, skin greasy with suncream, the sun thudding down on my back. The day is a little bit of a blur until I finally reach my bag, and my towel, and my little bag of toiletries. I have the best shower of my life. The albergue in El Burgo Ranero is a donativo run by a pair of Australian volunteers with big, goofy smiles and lots of jokes (“Do you speak English? How about Australian?”). I make a big pot of white bean stew with roasted garlic and peppers and share it with someone I met on the road. The mattresses sag into the middle. I see complaints about this but I like it: I feel like I am being cupped in a large hand. It does however take a lot of effort to get up for a piss. 

Tomorrow it is about 40km to Léon. I think I can do it. I’m clean and full of garlicky beans. I set my alarm to some time well before dawn, insert my earplugs, and let the sagging mattress envelop me.