Friends Made
I took a day trip to Vigo to see,
Angel, Nieves and Lara (Spanish mum and Dad and their daughter)
I’d met them before on the Camino Frances last year, I remember Angel made a fantastic quemada, (I probably told you about that alcoholic bonfire in the middle of the dinner table.) This time I got drunk as a coot on orujo at a family picnic in a park overlooking a beautiful bay and Vigo. Here I listened to them singing traditional Galician songs after they had made me sing ‘I was Born under Wandering Star’. Well I'll go over the trip in more detail later as I only arrived in Australia on the sixteenth of July. I missed nearly all of my dear friends from the Camino last year and will get round to writing to them sometime. Meanwhile here’s a list of most of my new friends from the Via de Plata so you can at least feel you met them too
Reinhard (from Germany)
Reinhard kept me company on and off over the first part from Sevilla till he left just before Salamanca. He’s keeping well and kept in touch by text all the rest of my journey. He went to Norway on his return but in now back in Germany.
Nicholas (A white South African)
Nicholas was with me to on and off from the first days out of Sevilla. He stopped after nine hundred kms in Ourense but I thought he would be able to finish after a rest, but he did seem very cosy with the hospitalaria when I saw him there in Ourense. Nicholas said little about having an artificial hip many of us didn’t know until he had trouble here.
Yvonne (from Germany)
A lovely girl of my daughter’s age speaking good English and Spanish. Yvonne also walked with me on and off over those early stages. It was my pleasure to protect her from the farm dogs and amorous men when needed and be the man about the place in lonely albergues, as she gave me the strength to keep going at a time when my feet were more like something hanging in a butchers shop. She would just keep going like the young thing she is, while I struggled to place one foot in front of the other. One time we came into the last village hoping for the albergue, an old lady crossed herself when she saw me hobbling down the last hill and I wondered
“Am I really dead or is it I just feel it.”
I first met Yvonne at my first stop out of Seville in the restaurant where I sat chatting to Reinhard. She boldly strides up and asks if we are peregrinos. Tall attractive and the same age as my daughter. We travelled many miles together. Her striding along in wonder of the wild flowers transfixing all males that caught sight of her and seeming quite unaware of the fact. I think it was in Mérida the group got chatting with three Spanish ladies and all males were ordered to guard this poor young girl travelling on her own. I was informed I must guard her like I was her father! She seemed to manage quite well without our help I thought, chuckle!
Brigitte (a charming Swiss lady .)
Brigitte left the via at Salamanca after proving to be a really wonderful friend, a person who talked so much common sense to me and proved to be great company. We had nearly died together of heat stroke and lack of water through one section. We also had the privilege of being refused water by a cranky farmer’s wife because, as she said, as it was midday and forty degrees, we must be walking for recreation, not as a pilgrimage. We deserved to go thirsty, and this we did for another ten kms. Brigitte went back to finish in August but things went wrong for her, she unfortunately had a hip problem. We never did get our dinner date together in Salamanca, maybe one day.
Jacques and Bernadette (A French couple)
We met very early on when I was walking with Reinhard and Yvonne. They are a most endearing couple who can speak no English or German only French or Spanish so Yvonne or I would listen to their Spanish conversation and then try to translate it into English or German. Always early risers we would often set out just before dawn with them. As the day went on they would stop for a break to eat a sophisticated snack and drink from the contents of the plastic bag that Jacques always carried in his free hand, the other always carrying his African lion stick. Bernadette hated to have anyone on her heels and would soon be last of the pack. When we tired and stopped, they would wave and go steadily on by. As we tired at the end of the days walk they would keep up their steady plod and so often were the first home. I met them on the later steps of the Via, way up near the top, Bernadette was having problems with her feet after walking so far. I was so pleased to bump into them in Santiago, they too completed the Vía. I went with them and Mark to eat a big plate of octopus to celebrate our completion of the Vía del Plata in Santiago.
Philippe and the lovely Carol, (from France)
Philippe was the tall Frenchman who, after saying goodbye to his wife Carol the day before, stayed behind to see that I would be ok, after I had fallen sick and stopped in a monastery albergue. After a stormy night it was he who arranged a lift in the morning of five kilometres so we could catch up with the others later that day. We then came to a stream that was now a raging river after the nights storm. It was he who first stripped naked and with rucksack above his head and roaring with laughter, waded into the water after I had fallen arse-over-head in the mud proving we could not cross at one point. Not only covered in mud I had almost slid into the rivers brown muddy depths on sliding down that bank! I was to meet then again in Paris when I walked my next Camino
Ursula (from Germany),
Ulli who seemed to glide across the ground so fast. When I first met her she was walking with the only peregrino Spaniard seen until one hundred kms from Santiago de Compostela. Ulli, as we called her, had walked the French route until Burgos then she had taken a train to Seville and she completed the Vía de Plata with no blisters at all. BUT, her left boot had to be prayed too, and talked too, every night, and patched and repaired in several towns to encourage it to complete the journey. Ursula must have completed 1300 kms on arrival at Santiago.
Ursula introduced me to the problems of being a vegetarian in Spain. You live on bread, ‘Gazpacho’ and ‘Ensalada’ (a cold vegetable soup and a salad, tuna covered if you as she did, also eat tinned fish) and you get charged for a full menu all the time. The main problem was, as Mark and I discovered, these people will commit murder to get a pizza when they at last enter a big city. Well done Ulli, we three had a ’tapas’ meal in Santiago to celebrate, and here in this restaurant we met again Mari Cruz and Paz and Marta for the last time.
Mark (an English lad in his thirties)
I walked with Mark and with Ulli together at different times. Especially during the last weeks, but on my arrival in Santiago only Mark accompanied me, as Ulli had taken a longer route to see a particular monastery involving a step of more than forty kms. That girl never tired.
Mark and I met fairly early on but Mark walked so many times alone then, he would usually be the last to leave and often the first to arrive. His speed left me for dead and we very rarely saw much of each other at first. Meeting again at the top of a mountain pass right on the border of Galicia (I had taken the shorter road way) the famous Galicana rain started and we walked together all afternoon as it poured down. I completed the way with him slowing down to my pace and we had many laughs and cognacs together and finally shared a posh hotel room in Santiago.
Mari Cruz of Galisteo
I will never forget the few hours I was with this kind and attractive Spanish widow. She kindly took me to buy new boots and showed me a beautiful city that I would never have seen. Those boots completed my walk and are still going well. I wish her all the luck in the world and may the hug I gave the Santa bring her much happiness.
Mari Cruz and Paz and Marta (Spanish)
I met Mari Cruz the mother and Paz her daughter and Marta for the first time in the Cea albergue talking about feet and blisters. Mark and I walked together with these charming people at odd times over the next few days. Unfortunately we lost them when we walked by a hostel thinking there would be another a little further on. We were to meet twice more later, in Santiago. We both enjoyed their company very much.
also the new friends on
The Fisterra- Muxía Way
Having completed my set task I then walked to Fisterra with two wonderful singing Asturias girls from Oviedo.
Virgicina (Vigi) and Conchita (Conchi) her charming friend.
We sang for three happy days, some modern but mostly songs from Galica or Asturias while wandering up and down Galicana mountains, through thick mists at times looking out for imaginary wolves! We found ourselves strolling through thick forests or gazing out over the blue Atlantic from the cliff tops. Another time sitting together in the shade, in the greenest of grass sharing our lunch, gazing across lush farm land to an expanse of distant blue water. We swam in the freezing Atlantic together and watched the sunset over the sea from the lighthouse at Fisterra, (the end of the known world in olden times,). Along with another charming guy who’s name always fooled me,
Emmzavel (from France)
They left for their homes by bus while I walked to Muxia and back to Santiago alone except for the last few miles where I met,
Mary (an incredible plucky young French Canadian.)
I saw Mary off to thumb a lift to Switzerland via Paris.
Fabienne (from French Polynesia)
Fabienne was travelling with her son and Mother through Spain and Portugal by car. My last day in Santiago gave me a far too short moment of this charming lady’s time as I became a her peregrino guide to the fabulous Cathedral.
Now I became homesick and couldn't make myself return to France but I returned to my loving wife Maisie.
My total walk must have been 1300 kms including the times I got lost.
