16 May to San Nicolas

Today I surprised myself! I’m not usually the adventurous one of the family who chooses to climb a hill even if there’s a castle on top of it. But I had to wait two hours for the museum to open after getting kicked out of the albergue (I had asked ever so nicely if I could sit just inside the front door, but no, there was cleaning to be done – and I wasn’t about to offer to clean for the sake of staying warm. So out into the three degrees I went, sensibly wearing lots of layers, but still in a short hiking skirt. I couldn’t bring myself to walk back down the street to see if a bar was open, so I tied my pack to the bench outside the church-cum-museum and headed up the hill. At more than one point I was terrified going up and figured I would be petrified in the non-moving sense of the word on the way down and hoped family would eventually come and find me! Actually I was fully expecting to slide the steepest bits on my butt, but that didn’t happen. (Full disclosure: any of my kids, perhaps with the exception of the one who gets vertigo on mountains, would probably have run down happily – it’s just me who is uber-cautious and prone to imagining myself falling off the edge – and clumsy enough to do it!)

Anyway, I walked up the hill, and down again and felt quite the sense of achievement. I drew the line, however, at climbing to the very top of the tower and standing on a sloping platform.

The views were well worth the effort.

A bonus was seeing the bodegas

By the time I got back down the temperature had gone up – to four degrees! It was a long 45 minutes to wait.

But again, worth it.

Then through town…

…and up the hill

Again, amazing views (see The Castle on the hill??)

And then there was rest of the way…

…to San Nicolas, a pilgrim’s hospital that was rebuilt from ruin status to its original (700 year old) purpose…complete with communal dinner and foot washing ceremony

Tonight we are 13 people representing ten nationalities, all of them European apart from Brazil and me: Croatia Denmark France Germany Italy Moldova Spain Sweden

Most are in their twenties, I’m guessing I’m the oldest. Spanish and Italian are the common languages. Everyone is solo and I think that lends itself to more interaction, not that there has ever been a lack of that! It is a very curious and vulnerable group. One is walking to break a cocaine habit. Another has thrown in their job. Another bright spark of just 22 years (Italian/French background, living in the US, visited London and loved it) applied to a dozen masters programmes in the UK and was accepted by them all. She’s filling in time until she starts at UCL. At least half the group, including guys, sat round hand writing journals before we cooked dinner.

The Masters student is considering writing something for my wee project….as is 7-year-old Tobias, who has lived his whole life in Africa and is now cycling “home” to Holland

I might be doing more talking than writing right now, but I’ve met a number of people, who are willing to put pen to paper for me, which is an exciting development.

Before I sign off, I thought it would be good to add another graph! Someone said the hill on the Camino elevation profile for today was just a little blip, so I turned on Strava to record my two hills, because I knew it would look much more impressive on that read out. Not wrong!