by Eddie Rock
A Welsh family arrives with their four children, a girl of around twelve years, two younger children of about seven or eight, and a small boy of around six. It’s taken them a month to get to here already, but fair play to them. God loves a trier! That’s what I keep telling myself anyway, so I venture out into the bright lights of Torres del Río and find a nice restaurant situated in a lovely old stone building. I sit up at the bar to enjoy another cold, refreshing beer served by a jolly little man wearing an array of trinkets, with rings on every finger and bells on his toes by the sounds of things. A beautiful woman emerges from the kitchen with jet-black hair and piercing eyes, carrying plates of gorgeous-smelling food. Broomsticks and five-pointed stars hang all around, and I’m beginning to wonder if the woman is some kind of sexy witch, as she’s certainly cast a spell on me, that’s for sure.
I notice both she and the fellow are wearing five-pointed stars around their necks. Perhaps they are Wiccans or pagans, maybe? We start talking about Ireland and the mythical places like Newgrange and Stonehenge in Britain. The little man comes over and starts chatting. They both speak very good English and are good people. Manuel enters the bar with a couple of ladies he’s met on the trail. One lady is Australian and her name is Jan. The other lady is English and her name is Sarah. Sarah tells me that I remind her of her son.
“Must be a good-looking chap then,” I joke.
We dine on succulent lamb and roast potatoes, and Manuel, who is watching his figure, gives me one of his chops with some potatoes. He is keen to point out with negative joviality that it will probably take the Welsh family six months to walk the Camino de Santiago, having already taken a month to get here. He checks his step counter and announces that he has walked 19,784 steps today and he reckons that we will all walk well over a million steps.
“And feel every one of them, I should imagine,” I add painfully.
Back at the hostel, the snoring is to behold. I’m thankful for my earplugs. I nip for a slash in the middle of the night and see poor-old Tucker wide awake, reading his book with his headlamp. He doesn’t look happy. To make matters worse, the loudest snorers are usually the rudest people, making them totally abysmal human beings. Many people are awake, including all of the little Welsh children, and their mother comforts the youngest child, who is crying. I drift off to sleep, fantasizing about doing the rounds with a pillow and small-caliber pistol with silencer.
TORRES DEL RÍO TO LOGROÑO
LOVE ON THE ROCKS
FOUR VERY RUDE, RED-FACED OVERWEIGHT PILGRIMS look very refreshed this morning, and about thirty others look absolutely shattered.
My feet are now blocks of pain, and my whole body itches to the song that goes, “Jessie, paint your pictures ’bout how it’s gonna be,” only the name Jessie has been replaced by the name Cocker, and yet another idiotic song plays over and over in my jumbled mind:
“Old woman, old woman, are you fond of dancing?”
“Yes, sir, yes, sir, I am fond of dancing.”
To ease the loop of loony songs, I plow on with the harmonica and The Great Escape theme tune. Over and over I play as my pace quickens with all my problems at the back of my mind, like some kind of marching musical meditation. The theme tune to The Waltons is quite a difficult one. As is “Waltzing Matilda.” “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” is easy, but “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” is far too hard, and Stevie Wonder’s harmonica solo in the Eurythmics’ “There Must Be an Angel” is totally impossible. So it’s back to The Great Escape and the theme tune to The A-Team.
Up ahead two Japanese pilgrims negotiate a small stream. The woman skips over the stones with ease and stands, shouting instructions as the man launches himself like a mountain goat onto a dangerous peaked rock and stands there balancing, strangely staring into space. I run to save him in case he falls backward but suddenly he leaps forward onto another rock, balances for a few seconds, then jumps safely to solid ground. He made it and we’re all laughing!
* * * *
A few miles down the road I come to rest at a terraced café in the beautiful town of Viana. I’m joined at the table by Jan, the Australian, and English Sarah, who speaks very posh and keeps telling me I remind her of her son.
“Lucky him,” I tell her with a hint of sarcasm.
“Isn’t this a lovely place,” says Jan, looking around the beautiful medieval plaza, illuminated to full architectural glory by the early-morning sun.
“Beats a Sunday morning in Scunthorpe.” I laugh.
“Where’s Scunthorpe?” asks Jan. “It sounds a bladdy awful place.”
“It’s up north,” says Sarah, mimicking a northern accent. “And there’s a joke by John Cooper Clarke,” she says, with a glint in her eye. “Who put the cunt in Scunthorpe?”
“Was it the same bloke who put the Grim in Grimsby and the ming in Immingham?” I joke
“I don’t think I ever want to go there,” says Jan.
All three of us shake our heads at the same time, and the Japanese couple joins us at the table. I notice that the man is blind, and at once I’m ashamed of myself for moaning about my little problems when they are nothing compared to his. After strong coffee I march onward and another mystery solved yet again.
“Who did put the cunt in Scunthorpe?”
I’d always thought you just crossed the S out.
While passing a church, I bump straight into an overly enthusiastic Benny, the clean angel exiting the beautiful building while staring up at the facade. “Estupendo, estupendo,” he keeps saying, looking to the sky instead of where he’s going, and still immaculately attired.
I wish I could say the same. Normally the churches en route are locked up, but this one is open, and nice and cool inside, so I have another go at praying, and the same words echo round my brain.
“The Lord helps those who help themselves.” All I can think of are the bad things I have done in my life and all the people I’ve hurt by my actions, with normally myself coming out the worst of all in the end. I can feel impending doom on the horizon and wonder yet again what I’m doing with my life and the reasons for doing this Camino, and what I’ll do when it’s over. The thought of going back to Scunthorpe fills me with dread. There has to be an answer. I cheer myself up by sticking a couple of euros in the magic candle box, and five little candles light up. There we go, five sins forgiven?
A blast of devilishly hot air hits me as I leave the cool sanctuary, and today every bit of me hurts. I have blisters on top of blisters, and the ant bite on my ring piece is driving me crazy. Maybe God is punishing me for watching too much porn or smoking too much dope?
On the entrance to Logroño cemetery the inscription on the wall catches my eye and I translate with Franklin.
“‘I was once as you are and you will be what I am.’”
“In other words, dead!”
I’m not sure I like the Spanish graveyards one bit. I don’t want to be bricked up in a wall when I die; I’m claustrophobic at the best of times. I cross the Río Ebro and pass a group of men fishing from the famous bridge. Outside the hostel, Manuel is complaining that his antique backpack is rubbing his shoulders to the bone, so Whilamena steps in and offers him a couple of sanitary towels to use as padding. I grimace as Manuel then tapes them to his shoulder straps and tries them for comfort with a big smile on his face.
The sun is fierce, so I move across to the shade of the four-story building opposite the church to watch a Spanish wedding unfold.
I have a terrible urge to scratch a very intimate insect bite in a terribly awkward place, and I’m in no position to give it the scratch it severely warrants. I leap up to go scratch and . . . bang! A plant pot smashes next to my pack, followed a second later by . . . smash! A child’s plastic toy. And four stories up, I spy a sorry little face peeping over the balcony. Saved by an ant bite. It must have been heaven sent?
As usual, there’s an unruly queue to get in the hostel, and as soon as the doors open all hell breaks loose. Luckil
y, I end up getting a bottom bunk in the claustrophobic boxy bunk beds, pretty similar to the graveyard, really, but less spacious. So I climb into my cask and pop in my plugs for a siesta. I open my eyes and pull open my towel curtain and come, face-to-arse, with a cycling man’s bare bottom.
“Fuck sake!” Talk about being rudely awakened. I fall back into my coffin and stare at the graffiti on the bunk above. I hear Swiss John and two Dutch men babbling on about shaving their legs.
“We like to shave down below. It stops any chafing,” says one.
“Yes, we do like to shave down there. It makes it nice and soft, you know,” says the other.
“When I’m at home,” says Swiss John, “I like to shave my balls. It makes them nice and soft too. My wife, she really likes it.”
“Yes, it makes them playful,” says the Dutch man. “We like it too.”
“Elton John shaves his too. I saw it on the TV,” says the other cyclist.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I need to get out of this place, quick!
I meet Cocker queuing for the showers, staring sadly at the ground, not even managing a smile for his old friend.
“What’s up with you? Cut your ball bag shaving?” I ask him.
“No, Belen’s boyfriend is here!”
“What!”
In the plaza, two very sad heads are deep in conversation, and it doesn’t look like it’s going particularly well. Poor Belen looks very upset.
“I thought you said her boyfriend has turned up?” I say to Cocker.
“That’s him,” he moans.
“Holy Jesus! I was expecting to see some kind of Ricky Martin or Enrique Iglesias type boyfriend in a Porsche 911 or something, not cardigan-wearing Julio Iglesias in a Citroën 2CV. “He must be about fifty,” I point out.
“He’s fifty-one,” sighs Cocker, “and she’s twenty-nine.”
We sit on a table, out of earshot, and weigh up the situation.
“He doesn’t look like he’s got a lot of go in him, does he? I can’t imagine him getting her on all fours and giving her a good banging all night long, can you?” I ask him.
Cocker’s face drops. “Do you have to be so vulgar?”
“Err, yes I do! Look at what’s going on here, man. That girl is in serious need of a good fucking, and look who she’s got to do it with. Stop beating around the bush and get in there, son!”
As Cocker stands up to buy the beers, Belen looks up and they exchange nervous little smiles. Suddenly, Julio stands abruptly, then turns and leaves without so much as a kiss or a kind word, and it looks to me like Belen has just given old Julio the Spanish archer—“the el bow.” But now poor-old Belen is in a state, and who better to do the comforting than my amigo Cocker returning with the beers. I leave them to it and return to the hostel.
Back in the room an enormous fat woman has miraculously squeezed herself into her coffin and the gay cyclists loiter with intent, cruising the bedrooms in their skin-tight biking shorts. A pretty but odd American woman changes into a silk nightshirt, and her boyfriend puts on his silk PJs.
At 3:00 a.m., I wake up, screaming, while dreaming that I was being buried in a wall in a Spanish cemetery, and then I scream even louder as I’m comforted by a naked Dutch man.
LOGROÑO TO NÁJERA
WHATEVER NExT?
I START OUT EARLY WITH YANNIK, a big Danish fellow. He has the most impressive Viking beard I’ve ever seen. He tells me he started to grow it back in Le Puy, over a thousand kilometers back. The streets here are an awesome spectacle with so many lovely buildings, fountains, and statues. Maybe I should just stay in Spain after the Camino. Maybe get a camper-van like Pugwash and try to stay below the radar. Every time I think of Scunthorpe I feel hopelessly depressed and wonder what I’m going to do when I finish. We pop into a café and have a nice cup of coffee and then I realize I’ve lost my wallet. So I run back quickly, hoping for the best but also planning for the worst, while foolishly getting a cod liver oil tablet lodged in my dry throat, which then melts and leaves me burping horrible cod liver breath all the way back to the hostel. One idiotically excitable graybeard tells me I’m going the wrong way as I come face-to-face with him in the narrow streets.
Back to the hostel, I find my wallet where I left it, underneath my pillow, and walk out of town relieved. But it doesn’t last long, as I feel a huge cold sore building up on my bottom lip. That’s all I need right now! A facial sore to go with all the rest of them. Great!
I wonder how Cocker’s getting on. I haven’t seen him this morning, but he’ll be there somewhere, ambling along slowly with Belen and hopefully putting in some serious groundwork now with Julio out of the picture. It’s hot, hot, hot, and my heat rash is growing and spreading daily, now finding its way onto my lower back where my pack has been rubbing. The approach into Nájera is uninspiring, and at a rusty old bridge the arrows completely disappear!
Which way now? I wonder.
The midday sun is taking its toll, so I go with my instincts and end up walking half an hour in completely the wrong direction, ending up at a solitary farm. A fat man in a dirty egg- and wine-stained vest points me back the way I came. Sweltering heat waves rise from the road and I watch as a miniature Clint Eastwood figure approaches me with his poncho blowing in the wind. When he’s at my side, he stands about four feet tall. Mini Clint speaks Spanish and has a quick word with the dirty fat man and we both walk back together in total silence.
I leave him staring at a wall with some pilgrims’ prayers in every language but English and after crossing the bridge there are arrows all over the place.
I arrive in Nájera with a terrible thirst and drink two icy cans of cola as Mini Clint comes steaming past, totally ignoring me, obviously on a mission from God. An idiot pilgrim stops just to tell me that drinking cola will only make me thirsty in the long run.
“Thanks for that!”
* * * *
Today my guidebook talks of yet another medieval miracle.
Not far from here was the great battle of Claijvo (834), associated with the beginnings of the reconquest of Spain and the intervention of Saint James the Apostle, who appeared for the first time dressed as a Moor slayer. Here, Ramiro I of León defeated Abdurrahman II of Abdurrahman, and in the middle of the battle Saint James turned up on a big white horse and steamed into the Moors. He slew a thousand Moors to the right and two thousand Moors to the left. Then he returned safely to their homes “a hundred vestal virgins.”
“Good-old Saint James!”
* * * *
Inside the pilgrims’ hostel the hostelero looks perturbed at my passport and credentials, and relations are becoming strained.
“But where have you come from?” he asks quite angrily.
“Well, I was born in Dublin, but I live in England,” I stupidly reply.
“No! Where have you come from today?”
His piercing eyes stare right into my soul. One wrong answer here and I’m out on my arse. “Where the fuck have I come from today?”
Err . . . the clock is ticking, pressure building, what’s the name of the fecking place!”
“Logroño!” shouts Yannik, overhearing my plight.
“Yes, yes, Logroño, Logroño, that’s the place!”
The Spaniard shakes his head and stamps my credentials. As the doors open, I realize that I never had my passport stamped in Logroño due to the rude pilgrims’ Boxing Day “sales-style rampage,” and this is apparently what all the fuss is about.
Whilamena invites me for a beer along with a stout Dutchman called Theo. We find a nice quiet plaza in the middle of town, and Swiss John joins our group with an old Belgian pilgrim called Eric.
The Euro debate soon becomes heavily focused on how much weight we will lose throughout the journey as Theo clutches his well-fed midriff and laughs. If he wasn’t a teacher in Holland, he could well have made a great bare-knuckles boxer, as he has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen and he’s louder and more excitable than Swiss John.
With my sparse knowledge of the Dutch language and the few English words that Theo knows, we get on like a house on fire.
“This is the second time I have gone to Saint James and I never lost any weight,” moans Eric.
“Yes, but look at you! You have nothing to lose! He has nothing to lose. Look at him, nothing to lose!” says Swiss John back to our group, and our table erupts into fits of laughter as Eric shrugs and rolls a cigarette.
Later in a bar across from the hostel, the French biker and I watch the film The Battle of Britain dubbed in Spanish.
I’d been hoping the French biker would be a bit more like bikers I know back home, but alas, he has only two bottles of low-alcohol beer and then goes onto sparkling water, the lightweight!
Back outside the hostel I spend the rest of the evening with my new Dutch friends, with my mastery of the Dutch language improving slowly again. Theo has the loudest, most infectious laugh I have ever heard. I would also imagine he has the loudest snore to go with it, and as the night draws to a close I ask a very important question.
“What room are you in, Theo?”
NÁJERA TO SANTO DOMINGO DE LA CALZADA
DOING THE FUNKY ROOSTER
MY PROPHESY HAS COME TRUE. In the distance, walking very slowly “like an Egyptian,” is Cocker, with Belen, holding hands and canoodling like a pair of lovebirds.
“How’re those boots of yours today? They do look very comfortable,” I ask with a hint of sarcasm.
“Yeah, they’re great,” he lies. “It’s just my ankles.”
“No blisters then?”
“None at all.” He grimaces.
“Seed exercises?”
“Speed exercises?”
Funnily enough, he’s not in the mood for chitchat.
Ahead of them is the fabled couple with the donkey. An English guy and a Dutch girl with a Spanish donkey that won’t go up or down steps or over bridges.