Travels With a Stick by Richard Frazer

Author:Richard Frazer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

CHAPTER 16

Unexpected Encounter

The next morning I headed out of Los Arcos alone with the sun slowly rising behind. About a mile out of the town on a road that must have been Roman because it was as straight as could be, I came across Brian. He was in a filthy mood, seething with outrage and indignation. ‘Do you see that?’ he asked me, pointing at the ground in front of us. In the gloom I noticed what was enraging him. There was excrement in the middle of the track – a reminder of the occasional wretchedness of human nature. What possesses someone to do such a thing? Why would a pilgrim have such disdain for his or her fellows?

Before I knew it I was on the outskirts of Logroño and the big city came as a shock to the system. The noise of the traffic was bad enough, but the urban sprawl of factories, warehouses and out-of-town shopping malls broke the spell of the Camino. But I meandered through it all, over little pedestrian bridges and through tunnels specially constructed for the pilgrim hordes, all the while little yellow arrows keeping me on the right track.

Once in the medieval town, I headed for the municipal refugio where, even at an early hour in the mid-afternoon, there was a queue of people waiting to check in for the night. It was clear that there were in fact far more people than there would be beds and, after the gates to the refugio were opened, a very efficient-looking hospitalero indicated where the line would have to be drawn, and a small group of disconsolate pilgrims headed off in search of accommodation elsewhere. Meanwhile, as we snaked our way through the check-in queue, I saw the Italian pilgrim I had encountered the day before. He was wearing his dog as a scarf, the animal limply hanging around his neck. Clearly his pet had not fully recovered from the privations and heat.

Once I was installed in my dormitory, which was clean but utterly overcrowded with at least 60 people in one room, I met up with Brian and we mooched off to see the sights. There are always interesting people to meet and wonderful conversations to have with people sharing their Camino stories. A young couple we met were clearly doing the Camino for athletic purposes rather than spiritual ones. They were travelling the world ticking off walks like birdwatchers adding to their life list of rare species spotted. They’d done a marathon walk through the Rocky Mountains, had been trekking in Nepal and both looked super fit. These two were cracking along, determined to finish the whole Spanish section in three weeks before heading off for a jungle expedition in Cambodia. I wondered if the spirit of the Camino would get hold of them over the coming weeks.

The municipal refugio had a curfew of 10 p.m. All pilgrims were expected to be tucked up in their bunks by then as the lights went out promptly on the hour.

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