Bierzo y Galicia

The day out of El Acebo is tough. All of the hubris of the day before has dissipated, leaving me with achey, chafed legs under a heavy and humid sky. All day it threatens rain without quite managing it, and I find myself begging for it to break the closeness and see off the flies. Oh - the flies! There are swarms of them. I begin to worry that somewhere in my bag, unknown to me, is a piece of putrefying meat. When I stop once to take it off and retrieve my poncho (unnecessary - a couple of teasing drops and nothing more) about thirty of them settle on me. It is maddening. They crawl on your face and skin. You thrash at them and they briefly disperse before setting again. My back is killing me and the air is like a hot damp blanket and every muscle aches. My shirt sticks to my back and tiny insects which land on my sweaty arms struggle to free themselves. 

The way down is a punishing one. Having ascended to the top of the mountain, I now have to scramble the descent, slithering over precipitous stone paths and down rocky scree. Thanks to the undulating landscape, sometimes no sooner have you made it to the bottom of a particular scramble then you’re looking at another one straight back up again. You pause to take a deep breath and recover your thoughts, but you shouldn’t pause, because then the flies return. So on you slither.

I stagger into Molinaseca, unable to enjoy how beautiful it is - a picturebook town in the valley, a river cutting through the middle of it, close-huddled medieval streets and people drinking coffee under awnings waiting for the rain. Like much of Spain it is full of stray cats, and I fuss a very friendly one who has a gammy eye. My bag is killing me so I stop in the first café I see, only to find out it doesn’t do food, so I drink my cortado and make it another few lurching steps to the next, which is attached to a bodega. The host is extravagantly friendly and as soon as he sees me come in he takes a little shovel and dips it into a bucket full of raisins and nuts, proffering them out to me. I decline the nuts but order a colossal sandwich, and apparently am so surprised by the scale of it when it arrives that he laughs, claps me on the shoulder and says, “is big, hah?”. Trite but true: the Camino always seems to find a way to make you feel better when you’re struggling. 

The final purgative downpour comes just outside of Ponferrada after hours of edging, and I take cover on a doorstep with a man and an alsatian while I wriggle into the poncho. 

What happens in Ponferrada? Nothing. It’s a nice city but I have a mix of chores and recovery in mind. I buy some linens and a new t-shirt after throwing away some which had become too knackered, too travel-stained. The new t-shirt is one of those stupid breathable mesh-type runners ones and I instantly spill coffee on it. My defining memory of Ponferrada (other than traipsing to an out-of-town shopping mall to pick up my clothes) is of crusader-themed things everywhere, which hits a little different when you associate it England fans vomiting over European town squares. It houses the Knights Templar museum: I wouldn’t know. Sorry Ponferrada.

Next day is heavy going as well, it's raging hot, the coffee stain bakes into my t-shirt (it’s clean otherwise, everyone is disgusting on the Camino, laundry isn’t planned for another day or so - don’t you judge me!). Jorg my German friend gives me his free cake in Cacabelos and some budgeting advice, so I decide to stop working as much and start frittering. This might not have been exactly his intention but it's certainly how I'm taking it. An opportunity for frittering arises almost immediately - we reach Villafranca del Bierzo where we plan to stay for the night, and by happy coincidence there is a music festival happening themed around the Camino. There is also an attached wine festival with vintners from the local Bierzo region - the day was spent walking through some stunning rolling vineyards under the sun. The token system for the wine is completely useless in a very Southern European way (incensing the German and the Dutch presence in the group, both of whom insist that were they given logistical control they could have the whole thing running ten times more efficiently), but we managed to drink some wine anyway, so it isn’t a total washout. 

The highlight is a tall, handsome and very drunk Californian vendor who is constantly taking swaying selfies with young Spanish women as he pulls silly faces - the man must be in his mid to late thirties so he doesn’t know exactly how to take a picture with zoomers, but it’s a game effort and a pretty face takes you a long way. He also seems wholly uninterested in accepting the stupid tokens for his wine, which he’s slinging about with great generosity. 

I’m doing my best here but it should be noted that I’m going off memory here because I’ve totally stopped taking notes. This has mostly happened because I’ve made friends, so I spend my days and evenings chatting, cooking, sharing meals. It’s nice, even if it has a suppressing effect on the literature (humanity weeps). I’ve largely preserved their privacy here, but it does make for a strange absence when I read it back. Maybe I’ll ask them permission to produce full character portraits. 

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Today, from Villafranca del Bierzo to O Cebreiro, is considered to be the hardest of the whole Camino. The whole final section is a steep ascent, the first half through thick and well-shaded woodland, the second over bare hills and through bracken and Spanish gorse. We stop at the halfway point. More stray cats drink from a fountain. An Italian man runs his long hair under the tap and then swings at his new girlfriend, giggling. We eat tostada with goat cheese and caramelised onion, and sit watching the goats who made it as they jump around on tables and act rowdy. 

O Cebreiro is a pilgrim village and nothing more. Nobody lives here, but pilgrims have stopped for centuries to rest after the punishing climb, so there are bars and albergues and a chapel. When everything closes, the owners drive to Sarria. This gives it a convivial air, as every new arrival settles down with a cold beer to celebrate the summit and take in the extraordinary views from each side. About a hundred metres before the summit, you cross into Galicia. 

While the others attend mass, I find a spot to relax. The mottled thatch of the albergues and cottages looks like rum and raisin. A warm but persistent breeze rattles the wicker chairs on uneven cobbles. A piece of still-gooey Spanish omelette arrives with a bottle of cider - this is the only way to eat it. I look down into the crumpled depths of the valley and try really, really hard to fix in place the memory of what it feels like. 

I worry sometimes that I’m not appreciating the moment enough but I think that's just being alive. You can't force happiness. Sometimes it creeps up on your blindside but it doesn't respond to reasoning and you can't look it in the eye. Telling myself that I’m having a good time had never worked for me, and you never know you're in the good times when they're happening. 

You have to say, on the balance of probability, these are probably the good times.

People are often trying to be “present”, but I don’t think it really exists. The present becomes the past instantly, as long as it takes for Now to become Then: the smallest possible unit of time. History has us by the collar. Enjoy your warm feelings when they arrive and accept you might not feel the fullness of them until long after the experience has passed.

Of the municipal albergue, the less said the better: it’s the first place I’ve been which didn’t see fit to invest in a shower curtain. We plan to stay out late like naughty teenagers as it is Dieke’s last night before she goes off to attend a wedding back in the Netherlands and then starts a new job in milk. An extremely involved plan is hatched to prop open some discrete back doors with rocks so that we can creep in after the hospitalero has gone. In the event she simply pisses off without even closing the front door, making all the cloak-and-dagger unnecessary. The more distressing limit is closing time at the bar, though we still have time to drink some disgusting Galician liquor and take a photo of the three of us in front of a sunset that defies belief, lighting up the sky in a mother-of-pearl and peach shimmer. 

Here is Galicia. A foggy, melancholy, Celtic place. There are witches here. Foxgloves line the paths and dry stone walls slump between fields of tan-coloured cows. I’ve not been in it more than a day when I come across a donativo with an organic toilet, a meditation space, a huge open barn filled with food and drink, and a stone circle. The fog grows thicker. The druids sharpen their sickles. 

Whether Galician or coincidence, the number of dogs increases tenfold, including some of the largest ones I’ve ever seen. A mob of them herd cows through a village as the farmer chases along too, whipping them to keep them moving. Others lie across the street, idle and dozing. None of them are hostile, which is good, because I don’t think I’d win in a fair fight. These dogs don’t look like they fuck around. I am not afraid of dogs - I have a healthy caution - but I imagine this stretch would be extraordinarily difficult for those who were. Plenty more less-friendly ones are chained up in shit-covered yards, behind rusted gates, straining at their collars. Farm equipment with viciously curved hooks, blades and shovels huddles under corrugated iron. The rich, fecund smell of the countryside fills the air. Galicia has a kind of grizzled, underdog beauty to it. I like it a lot.

This is helped by the fact that in many respects it simply looks like England. Oak and sycamore woodland, bracken and brambles, green fields and livestock. It has English weather too - a fine mizzle descends on several occasions, never quite translating into rain but still managing to make everything thoroughly damp. Am I feeling homesick? I didn’t think I was, but something of the greenness appeals to me. 

As finishing line gets closer I am seized by a new urgency. It's almost within touching distance. Every road marker which I pass counts down towards Santiago and now the numbers start with one. Soon I will be within 100 miles, at that point you can practically fall into Santiago. I reach Sarría, which is the unofficial starting point of the final leg. This is where the day-trippers, the school groups and the church expeditions join. 

As night falls, the festival of San Xuan commences (we are in Galicia now, so the spelling is in the Galego language). First a traditional band plays to a huge but bored-looking crowd, perhaps still digesting the vast BBQ lain on for free by the town, for which the locals queued for what looked like hours, snaking down the hill and away from the festival site. Then the bonfire is lit, though it takes a long time to get going, its tightly packed timbered refusing to catch.

Then all hell breaks lose. 

The lead Devil appears, in an ornate, leering mask, carved from wood and flickering in the firelight. He steps on stilts, towering over the crowd, swinging his heavy head this way and that to take in the gathered celebrants. He lights a torch from the bonfire, and turns to head down a hill towards: what? He lowers the torch to something on the ground. A band rolls up - rolls in the sense that the drum kit is on wheels, surrounded by a brass band - and positions itself behind the lead Devil. A crowd of lesser devils in heavy overalls appear, lining up as if for parade.

The lead Devil and host of the celebrations lowers the torch to the floor. 

Everything explodes. 

A cluster of fireworks which had been quietly laid in the dark now explode in a long, double-breasted line down the hill, tearing a hole in the night. The parade begins, and the fireworks do not stop. The heavy suits being worn by the other devils must be fire-retardant, because they caper and spin and hold fireworks aloft in their hands, spinning them around, leaving dancing afterimages across my retina. Oooom-pa oooom-pa the band goes, hammering down the hill after them, the constant machine-gun crack of new fireworks going off behind them, yellow and red and white, and now the dangling strings of something in the streets make sense because these are the fireworks, left for the progress of the parade, so the devils have only to reach up and pull down the latest one, light it, go capering into the night again. 

The parade moves slowly, violently, loudly. It creeps down the hill, and the thunderous cracks of fireworks rattle shop-fronts and appear to spray over attendees who wait on the side of the route. Does nobody get burned? It hardly seems possible that they wouldn’t be, but there are no screams, no rushing paramedics. In fact there are no visible paramedics at all. One red-faced man, clearly several drinks deep, runs into the middle of the firework show in only a t-shirt. He dances with the devils as they hold the still-flaring fireworks in their other hands, pointing them away from him. Do sparks not settle on his skin? Will he not wake up mottled with blisters? Perhaps. Nobody makes any attempt to stop him. This is San Xuan. The streets belong to the Devil tonight.