Life's a Stitch

13k

 

What a magical day on the Camino. We left the parade of pilgrims to turn onto the Spiritual Variant of the Camino Portuguese Route. After leaving the hotel in Pontevedra, I saw a familiar person in the distance. “That can’t be Robin, can it?” I asked C. Sure enough we caught up with Robin and Marietjie from South Africa.

We walked three kilometres with them before turning onto our new route. 

 

This one took us up over the mountain and all the way down to the sea. 

 

It was a mushroomer’s paradise. We saw shaggies, puffballs, common field mushrooms with their pink gills and my first hedgehog, plus more that I couldn’t identify as edibles. We didn’t pick any as our suitcase is already scented with the refusing-to-dry porcini, my prized souvenir of this Camino

 

Chuck’s traditional pose in a Camino tunnel. He’s added belting out the first two words of our national anthem because tunnel acoustics are exceptional. “OH CANADA!” Doesn’t he look other worldly?

I’ll post the singing part in the future, when we have better reception.

 

We walked through the ever present eucalyptus forest, some recently harvested leaving us with a trek of aroma therapy. Similar to walking through the mint fields earlier on.

 

We stopped in the first tiny village for a coffee con leche and an “opportuni-pee,” where we met a couple from Denmark, now living in Spain. He is an author who has a series of books about the Camino, she a retired therapist who specialized in critical incident stress debriefing. We asked if he was familiar with Chuck’s cousin, also a travel author. No he didn’t but he knew his brother, Michael, the musician! 

 

Michael passed away too young from cancer. He sang at our eldest daughter’s wedding in 2006. Whenever we walk alongside a river on this Camino, C has sung his song, “By the River.” 

 

Was this meeting a coincidence or Camino magic? Her we are with the Danes. Yes, that’s a baguette in my pack.

 

We passed a house even more narrow than ours, which is 22 feet wide. This one had an exterior width of maybe 9 feet. Considering the thickness of the stone walls, the rooms must be 7 feet wide.

 

 

When we hit the waterfront it was low tide and a stream of commercial clam diggers with rakes, barrels on wheels and other shell fishing tools, headed out to work. There must have been 100 of them.

 

After 13k we took a taxi to the monastery in Armenteira, where we are staying in the convent, and we were supposed to check in by 1:30. Due to a power outage it ended up being 4:00 before we were registered by an energetic English speaking nun in a habit and running shoes. She reminded me of some of my Catholic school teachers, the ones we thought were cool. Our room in the convent:

 

We attended evening vespers: seven greying nuns, a young nun-to-be dressed in jeans,  and an ancient monk sang and prayed. At the end they invited the handful of pilgrims in attendance to come up for a blessing in our own language. It was beautiful, moved me to tears.

 

And now we’re drinking hot tea, safe and dry from the cold rain, in a 1700’s era building with 2.5 foot thick stone walls.