Sunday May 26, 2019

Redondela to Pontevedra, Spain—Day 11; 34,217 steps 

Proverbs 11

v. 22  Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.  Europeans have different standards of modesty from Americans.  In the albergues Maurice has already had several unexpected eyefuls before he could avert his eyes.  I don’t think anybody means to flash; it’s just tight quarters with minimal private space.  If we’re out in the open, I sleep with my next day’s clean shirt on and in the morning slip on my shorts before I get out from under the sleeping bag.  Tonight in the quads, with about one meter between the beds, Maurice used our bendy hooks to hang his towel along the side of his bed to avoid surprises from the young ladies in the next bunk.  Delightful young ladies—just don’t want them to be too delightful.  Dear Lord, please keep us pilgrims from being distracted by the world.  Help us fix our eyes on you.

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We got up at 6:50 even though I heard other pilgrims start leaving about 5:30.  We had a fine breakfast in the little kitchen area from our groceries but we abandoned extras to the kitchen that we didn’t want to carry.  We still have two tangerines for lunch, though citrus fruit carries like lead.  At 8:50 we were out.  Maurice was standing near the front waiting patiently for me but in my inner eye I saw him drumming his fingers and tapping his toes.

It was a quiet Sunday morning in town.  Most real pilgrims were long gone by now.  There was no time to look at the church.  There’s not much sightseeing in this journey, partly because we’re pressing ever onward but also because when we stop for the day we’re too tired to do anything else.  Some energetic young pilgrims actually use albergue kitchens to cook themselves dinner at night.  Not me, baby.  Lead me to the nearest restaurant and dish out the soup.

At a cafe stop we had a surprise view of a wide ria leading into the distant sea.  The hard sea breezes we fought against the first few days were now a welcome refreshment. 

The road soon began its first ascent.  Just into the cool of the forest a piper on a gaita (Galician bagpipe) offered mournful tunes and sellos. 

Up we climbed.  Back out in the open were horreos in every garden, rows of vegetables in the sun, elevated grapevines and stone everywhere.  There are stone walls, stone roads, stone paths, stone bridges, stone houses, stone railings, stone tables, stone supports for grapevines, stone horreos, stone cruceiros (crucifixes) in every village, stone edging road and garden, old worn stone, newly-cut stone, mossy stone, ivied stone, stone colored with lichens, stone sprouting wildflowers, stone containers to pot your plants and hold your clothespins and feed your chickens.

In Arcade I took off my pack and flew quickly down the road to see the 13th-century Romanesque church—a disappointment, as many have been, in bad light and narrow enclosure and locked up anyway.  Up through the village we wound and back into the woods, where we found a lovely stone table for lunch in the shade. 

Then it was up again into the forest for the second big climb of the day.  The path was rocky and tricky underfoot; we are still on Roman road XIX and after several millenia stones that are still there have settled unevenly.

Our guidebook recommended another “delightful riverside path” which really was, shaded and cool by a crystal clear stream, even if it was winding enough to add an extra kilometer to our walk.  It was still a long trek through suburbs into Pontevedra and we didn’t get to the Slow City Hostel, a small private albergue where we had reservations, until after four.  Nine women and Maurice are in three rooms, bright and white, with a helpful owner and a kitchen stocked with breakfast basics including fruit, coffee and Cola Cao, and we are staying two nights for another rest day.

Maurice has had a blister on the bottom of his foot behind his toes for about a week now.  I did the pilgrim treatment of carefully running a sterilized thread through it and leaving it there so the blister can drain as necessary.  We put a fresh piece of Omnifix tape over it every day.  It looks pretty good most days and Maurice says it feels better.

I asked Maurice for the bendy hooks to hang some things in the shower.  Whoops.  He left them hanging under his bed in the last albergue where he had the towel up.  So much for shielding his eyes.  We took a rest until church bells clanged at 7:30…or was that trash can lids?  Most bells in these towns aren’t very melodious.

We hoped we would find a suitable restaurant open for dinner and we did, a place down the hill in the old town pedestrian area at a T-intersection had a handful of tables outside where we could people-watch from three directions.  Pedestrian area, of course, means pedestrians only until a car wants to come by, or a motorcycle; sometimes it’s a snug fit and you have to move your chair back. 

We were having a fine supper and Maurice reached up to turn on his hearing aid to hear me better; sometimes he puts them in but doesn’t turn them on because…I don’t know, I think he should have them on all the time so he can actually hear me the first time I say whatever I have to say but he doesn’t.  So he reached up to turn it on and it wasn’t there.  The left one was there but not the right one.  We both remembered him sitting on the bed putting them in.  They’d never fallen out before.  Hmmm.  The AWOL aid could be anywhere.  When we left we checked around where we ate, then the route we’d walked to get there, then the plaza where we’d wandered around, and finally the bed at the albergue, the floor and Maurice’s pack.  No sign of it.  Well, at least he still has the one for his bad ear.