Day 5 - Viana - Logrono - 10km

10th May

Albergue
€5

Weather
Overcast and threatening rain for most of the day - when the sun comes out the weather is steaming

There is a moment before fully waking that I enjoy. That moment when the limbs of the body are relaxed and the eyes are still closed as if the senses of the body are warming up slowly one by one. This is a lovely state from which you can easily slip back into your dreams if you have awoken to silence around you, or your bed is comfortable and the temperature right.

The parent of a young child knows that this semi dream state is left behind, long forgotten when toddler-dom arrives. Aurelia wakes most mornings with energy burning to escape her small body and if she has undone the zip on her Kinderkot then she loves nothing better than to crawl over to you and welcome you awake by picking your nose for you!

But this morning my ears informed me that she was still sleeping, my ears instinctively searching for the soft sounds of her regular breathing. However this dream like state was not to last as the assault on my ears was so disorientating I was forced to switch on my other senses to make sense of my surroundings. What on earth is that noise -is it French? Why are French people shouting all around me? Why does my bed feel so hard? And who has chopped off my feet and replaced them with burning balls of fire!! Where the hell am I ?

The answer to those questions was I was rapidly waking up, surrounded by people, on the living room floor of the albergue where we stayed last night. I was not in my bed at home and the hard tiled floor would explain the general aches and pains I felt In my hip and knee joints. Those burning balls of pain which used to be feet - I was responsible for those - a reminder to not bite off more than I could chew in future. Okay, okay I’ve learnt my lesson I promise

Apparently if you are a French pilgrim your voice has no volume switch and so you are left only to speak so that your voice reverberates of everything that surrounds you - my head included. My eyes go to the Kinderkot once again - surely I was mistaken, there is no way that Raya could be sleeping through this noise - an army mess hall would be quieter than this. Pilgrims observe me checking on Aurelia and their excitement at seeing Aurelia wake up only causes them to raise their voices in anticipation. I am sending a plague of blisters on anyone who wakes my daughter at 6am today and make it clear I want them to back away from her Kinderkot.

As I take in the pilgrims around me not only do I notice they are all loud - I had been sleeping with ear plugs in - but they are all dressed the same - in wet weathers. Seems that the sound I had heard had in fact been rain, and not ‘the soft pattering on a tin roof lulling you to sleep rain’ but rather the ‘torrential downpour that will make the path a mud bath today’ kind of rain. Varying assortments of ponchos parade pass Nick and I as we slowly start sorting our clothes - don’t they know it’s not raining inside - and the French pilgrims have the most impressive rain gear we have seen so far. Turns out this is because they have walked from Le Puy and for the 5 weeks of walking to the Pyrenees they had encounterd rain and mud every single day - hmm so the French are responsible for bringing this bad weather with them.

I start the slow process of bandaging my feet remembering today that my sister in law had asked me to take regular photos of my feet and blisters if I got “any really awesome ones”. Well these babies are redefining awesome!! After a combination of gauze, compede , elastoplast and electrical tape I put my socks on and squeeze my feet into my boots. This is going to be bad, really, really bad.

This was not the experience I was hoping for and certainly not what I wanted to be journaling about but a glossed over golden blog does nothing to share the realities of the camino experience and it is these realities that teach our minds the lessons from which the camino becomes so meaningful. Therefore the “warts and all” or shall I say “blisters and all” version must be shared.

The overwhelming feeling towards my body is anger. It seems that my body has a history of being reliably unreliable. Nick has always been fit and I on the other hand have a “please infect me/ injure me” sign on my forehead which is apparently irresistible to Life. This camino experience I had envisioned as empowering and uplifting. Instead my body and my mental strength appeared to have run for cover at the first sight of strife. Today I was worried we had bitten off more than we could chew and since it was my job to carry Aurelia if I wasn’t up to the task then I would be responsible for our family trekking adventure coming to a premature end. Never one to let go of a dream easily I tried to pull myself together to get my head around the walk ahead of us. Today would only be 10km and we only had to take it one step at a time. Small achievable goals was the strategy of the day.

Slowly pilgrim by pilgrim cleared out of the living room and it appears the silence is what wakes Aurelia from her sleep. Perhaps she too was slowly turning her senses on one by one and once the coast was clear she knew it was safe to make an appearance - clever peregrino.

We organise our packs (the speed with which we are doing this is not improving we note) and head out the door. At least we weren’t the last to leave today. A lady is sitting with her feet, soaking them in salt to clean her blisters while she argues with the albergue security man that ‘she doesn’t care if it 8am -her feet are not ready yet”. When you stay in an albergue you are able to stay for one night only and then you must have left by 8am the next day. We pass out the door with 10 minutes to spare.

The time it takes to get dressed, feed Aurelia, have breakfast and pack our bags has worked in our favour as now the rain has stopped. The downside is that the wet muddy trail has now become irresistibly boggy for our boots. We squelch slowly along the trail and try to avoid ending up on our backsides. The muddy track also makes it very difficult to find anywhere suitable for a nappy change for Ray.

The walk is mainly flat before a short climb before entering Logrono. The landscape today is not what we would term ‘inspiring’ as we spend a lot of time walking through the “Embalse de las Canas” which is a wetlands reserve. At some

points the ground is so muddy and churned up that we can’t see the footprints of earlier pilgrims and there are signs pointing in two opposite directions. If we hadn’t have met pilgrims who had walked this section before we could have easily rambled the wrong way.

With the I-pod on again and Raya enjoying being in the carrier with the cooler weather we see the first few signs to Logrono and console ourselves that we are almost there. I place a small pebble on the stone sign marker - my “’offering up of my sins” and the cursing I have done with my feet today, there are plenty to offer. As we walk under the motorway we see some pilgrim graffiti and shortly we enter the city of Logrono.

As we head towards the albergue we anticipate finding the location and having a small picnic lunch as there is plenty of time to kill before we expect the albergue to open and, as we have only walked 10km and it is only noon we anticipate most pilgrims will have walked on.

We see the street with the albergue and I am ready to head to the grassy river banks for something to eat. Thankfully Nick decides we should head down to the albergue to check it out. As we walk down towards the albergue, which is located on a corner, we hear voices. As we get closer to the corner we see that in the street to the side of the albergue a long queue of pilgrims have already formed, with at least 70 pilgrims waiting, and more in the courtyard area. Nick and I can’t believe it -we really have no option but to join the queue to ensure we have a bed inside the albergue that night. I silently curse the albergue experience and wish we were just checking into a hotel for the evening. The weather has now warmed up and we are sweating standing in the queue. No one is interested in letting me move in front of them to stand in the shade with Aurelia - some pilgrims true colours are showing.

As we stand in the queue hugging the wall and the small amount of shade we can find we see familiar faces in the queue ahead of us. Standing in front of us are a large group of German people. As germans walk down the street in the direction of the end of the queue they stop to speak to the germans in front of us -and then remain there. Now when this happens for the first time we think perhaps they were part of the initial group but as it continues we become aware that all these blokes are just pushing in. Who pushes in front of a woman and small child in the heat? Nick is gearing up to have serious words with the german in front of us (who does himself no additional favours by lighting up a ciggarette next to our small child).

As the queue begins to move I decide our standing and waiting is over and I push through the queue with Aurelia to the shade and seats of the courtyard so she can crawl on the floor and have something to eat. I ignore the disgruntled expressions from pilgrims in the queue. Slowly one by one the pilgrims are taken into the albergue to have their credentials stamped. The process here seems to be excruciatingly slow.

Nick enters the courtyard area with his pack as the queue progresses and many jokes are had at the size of the pack. Thankfully one pilgrim thoughtfully mentioned that a small child was waiting in the queue and one of the volunteers came out in the courtyard looking for us. She ushered us all inside, silencing the people complaing with a French tongue lashing.

The albergue here was large with well maintained facilities and they did their best to accommodate us with Raya by giving us the hospital room when it became free. However they are ultra strict at this albergue, the list of rules is long and they make no exceptions. Miss curfew and enjoy sleeping on the street without any of your belongings as some pilgrims apparently had to do.

Our meal is eaten in as I can’t walk to a restaurant. My feet are weeping and my socks were soaked when I removed them. I suspect that my toes are now infected.

Raya loves the attention of the dorm room set up and after a short bum shuffle away she bum shuffles back again - this time with a big smile on her face and her hands full of biscuits from the male pilgrims she has charmed along her journey around the dorm room.

We are both tired but we are thankful that only one of us is carrying an injury. Nick is left to do the showering of Aurelia on his own as standing on my feet in the shower I find a difficult process without juggling a slippery toddler. I say a prayer of thanks for having married a man who is such a hands on exceptional dad. I know that with such a heavy pack Nick must be doing it tough however he never complains and accepts it as another challenge on the camino.

The showering experience in the women’s bathroom is proving interesting. There appears to be some ‘cultural differences’ in how women from different countries approach the showering process. Without a doubt the Spanish women I encountered were the exhibitionists.

British women were the most prudish dressing entirely before coming out of the cubicle where other pilgrims waited to have a shower. I tended to put my undies and bra on and then jump out for the next person to have a shower, getting dressed outside. This seemed to be the most common option.

However the Spanish women would strip down naked whilst waiting in the queue, then exit the shower cubicle naked and remain so whilst brushing their teeth and hair. After a long walk each day this assault on the eyes was the last thing I needed.

The usual wash, eat, journal and sleep process is carried out and by 9pm another day on the camino is over. The female French volunteer has kindly secured us the private hospital room on the top floor of the albergue and we move our belongings up there and settle in for the night. The plan tomorrow is to find a pharmacy and see what range of over the counter drugs Spain has to offer it’s pilgrims.