Cycling :: Chiang Rai
I’ve now left Chiang Mai on a cycling tour organised by Spiceroads who I recommend wholeheartedly. I really do have to give them a proper plug here. The bikes are (or rather, after today’s ride, ‘were’) brand new 2011 season Trek 4300s, the hotels have been superb (google the Huai Khum resort for an example - we stayed in the top of the range villas), the food has been great, the tour guides and drivers are all brilliant… There are 11 of us on the tour, and we’ve got two support vans carrying our bags, and iceboxes full of fresh fruit (pineapple, papaya, dragon fruit, pomelo…), water, coke and ice-packs, and there is plenty of space for anyone that fancies a break. The whole tour really is brilliantly organised.
The cycling is taking us through beautiful countryside, with stunning views of cloud covered mountains, dense jungle and fast flowing (rainy season) rivers. There is a lot of agriculture around: mango and orange groves, fields of peanuts, sweetcorn and potatoes and, obviously, rice paddies. We’ve also seen slash and burn farming. The farmers use chainsaws for the slashing now, but still use fire for the burning… We’ve cycled through remote hill-tribe villages where chickens, pigs and water buffalo stray into the roads ahead of us, and through more developed towns where the kids run out onto the streets to shout ‘hello’.
Today’s ride was the best so far. The first 9k was on a rolling dirt track that was as wet as can be given that rain hadn’t stop falling since the previous night. Then we loaded our bikes onto 3 longtail boats and headed down the Mae Kok river for half an hour, through some rapids and across to the far side or the river, after another 12k of dirt track we paused, covered from head to toe in red mud, at a local shop for soft drinks and nori seaweed-flavoured crisps, before heading on a further 6k down the dirt / mud track to meet with the vans and the four people who had preferred to skip the tough morning stretch.
At the shop, we had been told that a wooden bridge we were supposed to cross was being repaired and that we might have to walk our bikes across it. There is no way I would have ridden across the bridge even when completed. It was a suspension bridge spanning a 50+m gap, a good 15m above the river. Two steel cables held the bridge up, but there were no rails at the sides, and it was missing a decent proportion of the wooden slats. Some of the slats that were there felt rotten, others simply weren’t properly attached and moved underfoot. Given the ongoing repairs, you had to step and lift your bike over small piles of replacement slats every so often, while the whole bridge swung underfoot. I’m glad I’m not afraid of heights: it was great!
The lunch stop was at a natural hot spring, so after washing ourselves down, we took a dip in the sulfurous water, before tucking into some delicious noodle soup. Back on our bikes, for the final 20k stretch to our very plush hotel in Chiang Rai. We’ve all got bungalows around the edge of the pool and as we showered, swam and decided what to do with ourselves, the drivers and tour guides washed down our bikes and carried out maintenance on anything that we had pointed out as needing to be checked. Given today’s conditions, that meant just about everything on my bike. The level of service really is amazing.
This whole trip really is awesome. I don’t use that word often. Or lightly. But I am having such a great time.
Chiang Mai
To make sure I didn’t miss my train from Phitsanulok to Chiang Mai, I left myself two and a half hours to make the one hour bus journey from Sukhothai to Phitsanulok. That first leg of the journey ended up taking two hours and twenty seven minutes, and I ran to the station platform worried that the train might already have arrived. It didn’t turn up for over half an hour and then, for no obvious reason, sat at Phitsanulok for another half hour and managed to lose yet more time on the journey to Chiang Mai. It isn’t that the Thai rail network is particularly congested: they only have about 4 or 5 rail lines and there are only about four trains a day on the Northern line… In future, I may be a little more forgiving of the delays you sometimes face traveling in Britain…
Chiang Mai has been great. On my first day here, I met Graham, an English man around my age, who lives in Bangkok and had just cycled to Chiang Mai and we spent most of the day chatting over beers in various bars around town. That evening, I met Olivier, a French man who is married to a Thai woman from Chiang Mai and who knows the city inside out. We set off around the town to his favourite Thai BBQ restaurant (packed out with locals - always a great sign) and another load of bars.
The next day, I had a yoga lesson and met Rob, an Aussie sailor around my age who was killing time between stints at sea (working six weeks on, six weeks off sounds like a dream), and the two of us took a songthaew up a nearby mountain to Doi Suthep, the most important of Northern Thailand’s temples. I’ve already become a little bored of Thai temples (“wat-ed out” as another traveler put it), but the view out over the city was amazing. Rob, Oliver and I went out together in the evening to another section of the best bars in town and to an open air restaurant on the 20th floor of a skyscraper, the unfortunately named Pornping Tower (at least it wasn’t Pornking!).
Since then, I’ve been on a three day cookery course learning how to cook various Thai curries, soups, stir-fries and so on. It’s been great fun and I have met loads of other travelers through the course. It has also meant eating a lot of very good food. That isn’t difficult out here: you can eat well from as little as 50p (I did yesterday evening) and if you’re prepared to pay more (who isn’t?), you can eat really really well. Despite all that, I’ve been really quite surprised how good some of the dishes that I made tasted and will definitely be trying to recreate some of them when I get back to the UK. Some of you may be lucky enough to get a taste…
I’ve carried on with the yoga lessons too and made the mistake of trying to keep up with an advanced class. Repeated sun salutations in 85% humidity had me sweating horrendously and then the instructor decided to torture us with some of the most complicated postures I have ever seen: variations on side crow, the firefly pose, and the flying crow pose. At one point she tried to get me to try the Eight Angle Pose (Astavakrasana). Google it. Look at some of the pictures. Try to imagine anyone thinking that I might be able to contort myself into that kind of a position… It wasn’t that there was a huge class and I just wasn’t keeping up: there were only two of us, and the other girl wasn’t much better than me. (She just didn’t give up and collapse into a laughing heap quite so quickly.)
Last night, I went out with Rob and we ended up in a really great bar packed to the rafters with young local listening to a series of very good bands playing covers of the Killers, Franz Ferdinand and other indie rock bands. It was a really great night and we’re thinking of heading back there tonight. First though, I’m going to have to choose where to eat dinner…
Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with the group that I will be cycling with over the next 10 or so days as we make our way up from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang in Laos. I’m really looking forward to the cycling, but after seeing how hard the yoga was in the high humidity levels out here, I’m also quite nervous about it…
Of Tourists and Pilgrims
Re-reading The Beach (in Thailand, what a cliche…) reminded me of a post that I had meant to write when I got back from Spain. The particular passage that reminded me of this reads as follows:
‘Holidays?’ I tried to say, but the word caught in my throat. It seemed so belittling. I had ambiguous feelings about the differences between tourists and travellers - the problem being that the more I travelled, the smaller the differences. But the one difference that I could still latch on to was that tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.
On the Camino the distinction wasn’t drawn in those terms, the split was between pilgrims and tourists. Everyone staying in the hostels had a pilgrim’s passport, but as Orriega scolded Hans when he waved his passport at her, that wasn’t what made you a pilgrim.
The division didn’t relate to religion (despite my lack of beliefs, I was generally accepted as a pilgrim) but was based on people’s attitude to the Way. Signs in some hostels (including Acacio and Orriega’s hostal) stated that ‘The tourist demands. The pilgrim says thanks’, and the margins of these signs would often include manuscript translations into dozens and dozens of languages no doubt left there by other pilgrims on their way through.
Pilgrims realised that the Camino would be tough, carrying large packs long distances, and that the accommodation might sometimes be quite rough (at 5 euro a night, you couldn’t really expect much!). They accepted this without complaint and were thankful for the little things - the warm shower, the red wine with dinner, the hospitalero’s smile. Tourists were forever complaining. About the food. About the hostals. About anything really.
Pilgrims were respectful of the others on the Way, and helped them out in any way they could: passing compeed or betadene to those that needed them, advising on the treatment of blisters, and sympathising with those that could not carry on walking for whatever reason. They were also careful to be quiet when others were sleeping, both at night and in the morning. Some tourists only seemed to think of themselves, loudly chatting with their friends as they packed their bags at 5.30am (why, oh why, couldn’t they have done this the night before) and switching on lights ruining others’ plans for a ‘late’ , 7am, start…
Another key difference was that the pilgrims were generally travelling alone, and made an effort to meet and talk to others along the way. The tourists were often in small, closed groups of friends from home and rarely allowed anyone into their circle.
For most of the Camino, the distinction was mentioned, joked about even, but it was rarely an issue. There were very few tourists, and they could easily be ignored. Except at 5.30am…
In the last 100km or so however, the Camino changed. To get the Compostela (and the plenary indulgence that goes with it) you don’t actually have to walk the whole of the Camino. You can walk as little as 100km (a 3 or 4 day journey) or cycle just 200km (a feat that Olly has now done a few times in just a single -long- day). As a result, large numbers of Catholics rock up at the 100km mark or more often at Sarria, which is 111km from Santiago (or O’Cebreiro, the first town in Galicia) and walk from there. When I say large numbers, I really mean it. Traffic on the Way trebles, quadruples, quintuples for that final stretch. The albergues get filled up and people who have walked 700km already are turned away. (This happened to Hans and I in O’Cebreiro.)
The new crowds were clearly tourists. They walked along in large crowds, chatting loudly with their friends. Often, they wouldn’t even be carrying backpacks: every morning, they would load their bags into a taxi or a trucks which would carry them on to the hostal that they would be staying in that night. They generally didn’t have sensible walking shoes, but they nearly all had a walking stick - bought at the Camino’s version of a tourist tat shop: the pilgrim tat shop. After St Jean Pied-de-Port (which had a couple), I didn’t see any of these until O’Cebreiro but then they became a common sight selling t-shirts, badges, scallop shells, walking sticks (complete with gourd and shell) and all kinds of other tat… it was really quite sickening. These people didn’t even know how to walk with a stick, but they wanted to look the part. They wanted everyone to think that they were pilgrims. Except none of the real pilgrims did.
It was really quite upsetting, and pretty much spoiled the end of the Camino for me. I didn’t really enjoy the last 3 days of walking. I just wanted it to be over.
At one point, on the way out of Portomarin sometime before dawn, I got caught behind a crowd of these wannabe pilgrims and couldn’t move for the crowd. When an opening eventually appeared, I practically ran through it and kept running until I was alone. All the time, I was thinking to myself that I couldn’t cope with these crowds and was considering taking a bus to Santiago, or just walking through the night to avoid having to deal with the tourists, and I remembered Jan-Bernard talking about his horror at the crowds after St Jean (which were nothing compared to this) having walked virtually alone all the way from the Netherlands. In that moment, I really understood his feelings and I felt sorry for him having to face this again - at the time he was about a day’s walk behind me.
Shortly before this, we had had to cross a narrow and rickety bridge in the dark and I had joked to Irmi about the Catholic church installing a series of tests for the faithful over the last 100km, the first being the ‘bridge of doom’, and I had warned her that the second was a cave full of bats that we had to crawl through. After I had made it past the crowd, I realised that it had been my cave of bats.
Note: I’ve been in Sukhothai for the past two days and am heading to Chiang Mai tomorrow. I’m spending about 5 days there, chilling out, practising yoga and taking Thai cookery lessons, before I cycle to Luang Prabang. I’m sure that I’ll find a chance to post some actually news - rather than a rant about tourists - when I’m in Chiang Mai.
What a lot of Wats
I arrived in Ayotthaya yesterday lunchtime, checked into a hotel and rented a bicycle to tour the ruined temples of the old city. Ayotthaya is built on an island surrounded by three rivers and was the capital of Thailand between the 14th and 18th centuries.
In 1767, an invading Burmese army captured and ravaged the city leaving behind pretty much nothing but ruined temples. The Wats (temple complexes) were built of stone and brick, whereas secular buildings were built of wood and straw. I guess the Thais never read the story of the Three Little Pigs.
There are supposed to be about 30 Wats on the island, with many more in the surrounding countryside. I’ve now visited a fair proportion of these… I cannot list the names of all the ones I’ve visited, as the guidebook only mentions half a dozen of the most notable ones and even the local tourist map only lists 36 (and misses off several of the ones I visited). I think I visited 11 or 12 yesterday and another 6 or 7 today. I lost count.
Some of the ruined Wats are really impressive. Huge expanses of land with ruined prangs, chedis, viharas, and bots dotted around and, as my guidebook puts it: ‘headless Buddhas scattered around like spare parts in a scrapyard’. Wandering around Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana, I felt like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, clambering over the ruined remains and down into the crypts. Then I got back on my rented sit-up-and-beg-bicycle with no gears and a basket on the handlebars thinking ‘Lara Croft would never look this uncool’ as I headed off to the next sight. Although it was quite cool having to steer my bike off the cycle lane to let an elephant past. (Incidentally, the weather here is far from cool: it is hot and muggy, and Lara Croft would never look this sweaty.)
Other Wats are less impressive: just the odd chedi left standing (precariously tilting to one side) with a few scattered piles of bricks around it (and probably a headless Buddha or two), abandoned to nature. At one of these, I had to face down a pack of 20 or so barking dogs (some of which were red-eyed with rabies) until an old Thai women beat them back with a big stick and I scarpered away pedaling as fast as my little legs would let me. After that experience, and having been bitten by a little yappy domestic dog in Spain, I’m beginning to develop a healthy level of cynophobia… (And yes Mum, I will be careful.)
The more lively, working temples generally look less impressive that their ruined brethern, but it is great fun to watch the various incomprehensible rituals being performed. At Wat Phanan Chaeng, for example, worshippers were handing up lengths of saffron cloth (together with a monetary donation) to a man dressed in white who then threw these up to some more white-clad men who were standing in the enormous (four story high) Buddha’s lap. They then attached the lengths of cloth to another piece of saffron cloth slung over the Buddha’s shoulder. The other ends of the cloths were spread out over those who had paid for them before being hoisted up over the Buddha’s shoulder whilst everyone repeated the words being chanted by the first man in white. I have no idea what that was all about, but I guess it is somehow supposed to earn you merit. The cynic in me couldn’t help but notice that most of the ways you earn merit involve money passing from worshiper to temple…
Another fun tradition was on display at Viharn Phra Mongkol Mopit where people were kneeling before the Buddha shaking tins full of numbered bamboo sticks until one fell out, allowing them (after paying the obligatory 20 baht donation) to collect a fortune linked to the number. I decided to give it a try and got what must be the best fortune ever:
Happiness and delight will come to you. Fortune is on the way as you expected. Relationship with loved one runs smoothly. Issues are resolved. Relatives will come visit. Lending money will be paid back. Lot of people will give you respect. Your wishes will come true. Things will be better when you are getting older, you will healthy, having long-life and well being.
I’m not sure what I have done to deserve this and can only conclude that I was very very good in my previous lives…
(Time-) Zoned out in Bangkok
It took something like 16 hours to fly from London to Muscat and on to Bangkok. I didn’t sleep. I ended up watching lots of the in-flight entertainment. By the end of the journey I was sufficiently bored and out of it to enjoy a film starring Chris Rock and Adam Sandler… That was worrying.
By the time I had checked into my hotel, I reckon I had been awake for almost 36 hours. So I went straight to sleep. Despite my (optimistic) 7.30am alarm, I woke up the following day at 1pm. Given that all of the major attractions close at 4pm this was a bit of an issue. Particularly given how long it takes to travel across town.
I made it over to Wat Pho in time to visit the temple complex and its gigantic Reclining Buddha before everything closed, had a massage, ate some Pad Thai from a street stall and then went for a walk across town. I probably walked for about 3 hours. Old habits die hard I guess.
Nathalie Walker was in town on Cambridge alumni relations business, and she agreed that meeting up with me for a drink or two was part of the job description. She gave directions to a bar that unfortunately included the line ‘if you get to the hospital you’ve gone too far’ when there were hospitals on both sides of the bar… I eventually got there though, and we had drinks at Fallabella and then at Cheap Charlie’s.
I went to bed a little after 1am with great plans of getting up early to go sightseeing properly. I failed. I woke up at 12.30pm… Still, with a better idea of how to get around, I made it to the main train station to buy a ticket to Ayuthaya for tomorrow, then to Wat Traimit (home to a solid gold buddha statue worth US$10m by weight alone) and to the Grand Palace (which was very grand). Then everything shut. I guess I’ll have to spend a day or so more here on my way back home.
Right now I’m in an internet cafe just off Khao San road. I thought that I should visit Khao San which is supposedly where all the backpackers stay. It is awful. Touts everywhere, hassle and tourist tat. The accommodation may be cheap, but I would hate to stay here. I guess I’m not your average backpacker… and I’m very happy that I can go back to my 5* hotel on the other side of town tonight.
Let’s see whether I am able to get my head around the timezone, get to sleep early and get up in time for my train tomorrow…
Ultreia y sustreia
[Note: this post was supposed to go live on Sunday at 10pm. The scheduler didn’t work though… Oh well.]
The words ‘ultreia y sustreia’ appear in lots of graffitti (as well as on t-shirts and other tourist tat) towards the end of the Camino. They are supposed to have been a traditional pilgrims’ greeting meaning something along the lines of ‘onwards and upwards’ in ancient Galician (although I think the words have latin roots, not celtic), and encouragement to keep going. I didn’t need that much encouragement. By the time I got to Galicia, I was really very happy to be walking and to keep going.
I am however heading onwards now. My flight leaves London Heathrow at 22.45 tonight, with a short stop over in Muscat on my way to Bangkok. I’m spending 3 nights in Bangkok before heading Northwards to Chiang Mai (via Ayuthaya and Sukhothai on the current plan) before cycling into Laos, then heading down through Laos to Cambodia, back to Thailand and home on 18 December.
Much as I am really looking forward to the next leg(s) of my trip, I do wish I had had more time in London to catch up with all my friends: I’m sorry to have missed seeing those of you I haven’t seen, and I’m sorry to have had to little time to spend with those that I have seen.
See you all in December or, more likely, in the New Year.
El Camino - Photos
Photos have been requested. Repeatedly. So here are a few of the best ones.
Peace in the Valley. An early morning view down from the Pyrenees on the first day of the Camino. By this point, I had already realised that I was lost, so it was probably about 7.30am or 8am.
I honestly cannot remember where this was. There were so many cute little villages like this, that it is difficult to keep track of which ones I took photos of. I think that it is on the outskirts of Castrojeriz, but I might be wrong.
The long straight road out of Carrion de los Condes. It went on like this for 17km without interruption. Strangely, I didn’t get bored.
An albergue in Boadilla del Camino. Not your ordinary pilgrim’s hostel. We called this place Pilgrim’s Paradise.
Bill and Catarina storm off into the distance, somewhere just past Sahagun.
Olly Johnston and me outside Gaudi’s episcopal palace in Astorga.
Hans and a donkey in Foncebadon.
The Puerto Irago is about 1,500m / 4,900ft above sea level. It was a small bump in my road from Astorga and El Acebo. The views were spectacular, and I wish I had taken more photos like this one.
Warning: pilgrims ahead. This was a serious roadsign on the road out of Cacabelos. I wonder if you can get quizzed on it when studying the Spanish highway code. I wonder if the Spanish ever study their highway code…
When the Camino gets into Galicia, some of the paths are just beautiful. It’s a shame there are so many people around for most of it, and you don’t get to take photos like this all the time. This was about an hour before Samos. I think that the two days walking from Cacabelos to O’Cebreiro and from O’Cebreiro to Samos was probably my favourite stretch of the way.
The sign marking the last 100km. It’s a shame so many people leave so much rubbish here, as that kind of spoils the photo, but this is about the only photo I have of me dressed for walking…
Santiago. Finally.
Me at the end of the world. With a beard. The beard has now gone. I feel so much better: human again. Worrying numbers of people said it suited me. I worry about them.
Cheesy sunset-at-the-end-of-the-world shot.
Even cheesier shot of boots with sunset in the background.
Santiago
I´m in Santiago. I got here yesterday. It took 26 days to get here. But I got here. At one point (see a few posts back), I didn´t think I would make it. As it is, I have days to spare before my flight home.
When I arrived in town yesterday, the crowds scared me. For most of the Camino, you hardly saw anyone. I remember albergues with only 10 beds and towns with only a few dozen inhabitants. The Camino got busier from Sarria as Spaniards walking the minimum 100km required for the Compostela joined the Way (I´ll be writing another post about that soon) and the route went through a few big cities, but none of that prepared me for my arrival in Santiago.
There were people everywhere, crowds and crowds of people. It didn´t help that I arrived on a Saturday and there appeared to be some kind of festival on. The place was packed with tourists, and huge numbers of pilgrims. When I got to the Casa do Dean (where pilgrims collect their Compostela), I had to queue for almost 2 hours. It felt quite an undignified way to end the Camino.
Hans, Irmi, Ras and I left Santiago later that afternoon and took a bus to Finisterra. I had been thinking of walking the extra three days there, but with a general strike here in Spain on the 29th, I decided that it would be safer to take the bus there and to head down to Madrid a little earlier.
Yesterday evening, we trekked out to the lighthouse at the end of the world, symbolically burnt some of our clothes and watched the sun drop below the horizon. Then we went out to eat some delicious seafood. A great end to our journey.
We came back to Santiago today. This afternoon, I have bumped into a number of those I have journeyed with - Bill, Soo-Hi, Fausto, Giuseppe… - and hope to see even more later today and tomorrow. I´m going to leave Santiago tomorrow evening and take a night train down to Madrid where I will spend a couple of days relaxing and visiting the sights.
The Camino has been a great journey, and the reason it has been so special is the people that I have met, however briefly in some cases.
I want to say a special thank you to, in the order I met them, Mick, Pierre, Lance, Jess, Randall, Fausto, Giuseppe, Sandy, Johnny, Cho, Mauro, Soo-Hi, Acacio, Orriega, Barholt, Jan-Bernard, Adriano, Hans, Paolo, Irmi, Mary, Kieran, Alex, Steff, Alex, Tenille, Bill, Catarina, Giles, Marcus, Jens, Ilya, Tricia, Jose-Luis, Gian-Paulo, Clare, Sara-Maria, Mike, Sinin (the Elvis of the Camino), Enrique, Ju, Olly (ex-Jones Day), Raquel, Helene, Nina, Tammy, Alfonso and Ras, as well as the many whose names I never learnt (or forgot all too quickly). I hope to tell some of their stories in posts to come.
I would also like to thank the hospitaleros who ran the many albergues I stayed in and helped look after the countless pilgrims flowing along the way. I know that none of them will be reading this, but still.
El Camino - Hostals
Along the Camino there are ´albergues de peregrinos´, pilgrim hostels, which provide pilgrims with accomodation. So far, I have stayed in an albergue every night except after the first day´s walking.
My guidebook describes 6 different categories of albergues: the municipal albergues owned and run by the local authority, the parochial albergues owned by the diocese and run by the parish priest, the convent or monastery albergues, the private albergues, the association albergues and the network albergues.
For the pilgrim, there are two types of albergues: good ones and bad ones. Who owns the albergue seems to make very little difference, and they are all so different, it hardly makes sense to devise any more complicated classification.
Some albergues only sleep 10 people, others cram in 120. Some albergues involve dozens of people in a single dormitory room (and therefore give the guarantee of snoring), others sub-divide large room into smaller spaces, yet others split their guests between a number of smaller rooms. Some albergues have rickety old bunks (some even in a three tier configuration) in draughty rooms dating back to the middle ages; others are modern and well designed, with luxuries like lifts to take you to your floor or, better yet, a pool; still others are little more than a couple of rooms with matresses on the floor. Some albergues involve a personal welcome from the owner and a home cooked meal, some have kitchens, some leave no option but to go out for a meal.
In any event, given a cost per night of between €5 and €7, you don´t complain. This is ridiculously cheap accomodation, and generally of a very decent standard.
El Camino - The Routine
The Camino has it´s own rhythm and it´s own routine. It is completely unlike my own life, but after a few days of adjustment I settled in and now it feels like the most normal thing in the world.
Every day is very similar. It´s almost like a monastic life: every day the same routine, every day the same events in the same order. Once you get into the rhythm you don´t have to think about it. Which gives you time to think.
Most nights I´ll be sleeping in a dormitory with anywhere from 5 to 50 people. (The dormitory in Roncevalles sleeps 120 in a single room. I skipped that one, and got my own room in a hotel. At that stage I was more of a tourist than a pilgrim, and now I regret it. It would have been an experience.)
I don´t bother setting an alarm. I know that others will be up early, shuffling around in the dark, getting dressed, rolling up their sleeping bags and packing the last few items in their backpacks. I can count on the earlybirds to wake me.
I´m usually up and out of the hostal by 6.30am. I´ll start walking straight away. I don´t usually eat breakfast at home, and have only bothered here a couple of times.
The first hour or so, I will be walking in the dark. I´ll use a headlamp to watch the road ahead of me for the yellow waymarker signs. And I´ll watch the stars and Venus which is in the West, in the direction I am walking.
The sun comes up behind me sometime between 7am and 7.30am. I might look behind me to see the sunrise. I might not. Either way, I´ll keep walking.
By about 10am, I´ll have covered around 15km and I´ll be ready for a break. I´ll find a bar and stop for a cafe solo. Possibly a croissant or a pain au chocolat (or whatever the Spanish equivalent is called). I won´t stop long. Maybe 20 minutes. Probably less. Then I´ll start walking again.
I´ll probably have a light lunch somewhere around 11.30am / 12pm. Probably a sandwich. Probably the local equivalent of parma ham. By about 1pm, I´ll be done. I´ll have arrived at the hostal I planned to reach.
I´ll stop, check-in, find my bunk, shower, and I´ll wash and hang my clothes. Then I´ll kill time, reading, taking a wander around the town, possibly stretching if I remember, having a quick beer, chatting with some of the friends I´ve made along the way or possibly with people I have only just bumped into and planning the next day´s walk. At around 7.30pm or 8pm, I´ll find a restaurant serving the ´pilgrim menu´, and I´ll eat.
I´ll generally be in bed by 9.30pm, and the dormitory lights will go off at 10pm. The next day, I´ll start again.
Sure there are differences from day to day. Sometimes the hostal will have internet access. Sometimes I might have breakfast and skip the 10am cafe solo. Sometimes I might not stop for lunch, and will eat after I´ve showered.
But fundamentally there is a routine that I follow. It mainly involves putting one foot in front of the other…
