Day 30: Lubián to A Gudiña

October 29, full moon and (almost) howling wolves, 26km

It’s another clear and freezing morning bright with frost and my first without painkillers for many days. I have a bit of concern, but yesterday afternoon I bathed my leg in the purest coldest slate-tumbled stream, drank, listened and prayed. And I think whatever has been hurting will be getting better now. I realised that my course of action with the Voltarin was really just more wishful thinking and ignoring the pain by blocking it with a drug. I thought of my poor shin in there still hurting the same but not able to communicate it to me because I wasn’t listening. So I decided to listen. Plus the voltarin has run out. What I heard was: don’t go so fast all the time. And, just walk so soft and maybe slow that you can actually feel the living country beneath your feet. And, sometimes the solitude you would like is to be found at the back of the pack not up front. And, hey girl, be graceful about being slowed down by something out of your control, because it’s going to happen more and more as the years pass. Learn now that it can be a blessing in its own way. So up today’s mountain we go, slowly, slowly, leaning on my two sticks and watching and listening.

L and I saw a young deer pottering through the forest oblivious to out held-breath wide-eyed happy faces, its white tail bobbing as it disappeared into the bracken. The path is just stunningly lovely: yellow and ochre and brown oak leaves carpeting underfoot and acorns crunching. They are so fat they’re almost spherical. There is grey slate and rainbow slate and cloaks of frost over the trees and bushes. After a couple of days of mad photographing I’m having a break today. Ooh, it’s hard at first! I’m still composing shots in my head and can’t help but think that this one will be the most beautiful of all. But it makes me stop and look, to drink in colour and vistas. Let that be enough. There is quiet and birdsong. A loo with a view.

There was a black and white tiny cat lying in a pool of sunshine on a wall just inside the border of Galicia which we passed a couple of hours into today’s walk. She was so friendly and rubbing and purring and licking our hands. I thought draped around the neck she would be a good addition to the winter warm clothes. I asked a farmer walking by for our first words in Gallego, the dialect spoken here, which is sort of midway between Castellano and Portuguese. Buon camiño! He said.

Standing under one of giant chestnut trees here is like being inside a room of stained glass windows shining in yellow, gold, chartreuse, caramel and ochre. The sheltering rich presence of these trees cannot be described. Come walk this way, and come in the Autumn!

Galicia’s Celtic origins are palpable today as we pass through small pueblos. Bell towers have spiral carvings and church yards are planted with Rowan trees, the people have a very different look as well: light eyes, blue and grey, and fair skin.

It is so wonderful to be here in Galicia. The rural life here that grows in and around and is entwined with the fig trees and hand-cut slate rooves and mossy steps and gardens and goats and the chestnut trees that year in and year out provide a wild harvest for the people… it is real and vital and humble and touches me deeply in a warm greeting on a muddy street or a handful of chestnuts offered or a freezing drink from a fountain. I’m not tooo sentimental about it. Just let me walk with it for now.

Love, Wildgoose

Day 29: Puebla to Lubián … Or: frozen pilgrims served with chestnuts

October 28, 33ish km

It was a bit of a shock stepping out of our snug albergue this morning. Daylight savings finished last night so we got an extra hour of sleep, but I could have stayed in bed a lot longer. A clear and pale blue sky was a frozen dome above the sleeping Sunday morning town. Alvaro said, yeah it’s cold! Probably about six degrees. Six degrees? I says, more like six below! He jumped in his van to take it ahead and ride back to meet us on his bike and called out from the window: it’s not minus six, it’s only minus three! It’s so cold it’s impossible to hold onto my sticks. After just a minute or two my hands are numb and painful. So I keep them clenched in my jacket pockets and grip the sticks under an arm. Awkward.

The landscape as we wend beside the Tera is beautiful and otherworldly. Poplars shine in the sky golden yellow and their leaves crunch underfoot fringed with ice. To either side the thistles and dead summer leftovers are dusted with silver and from a distance is all soft grey-white. When the sun catches a field it sparkles and glints in tiny rainbow prisms. Ice in puddles makes shadows on the mud like clumped snowflakes. There’s such a contrast between discomfort of body and delight of the spirit as this new beauty graces us. It is an intimate and wondrous showing. A drip constantly sits at the end of the nose. The red nose.

A few hours later and the sun is high in a cloudless sky. Letizia and I are grinning like cats as we stretch and sunbathe in a white-stoned plazita. The mountain pass, and highest point on the Camino Sanabrés is behind us, and we are eating our salads with hard-boiled eggs, fresh walnuts – a gift from Marie in Santa Croya a couple of days back – and dark chocolate.

Lubián sits in a forest of oaks and chestnut trees, a little pueblo with as many ruined houses as still-standing ones. They are all as beautiful to my eyes as each other: stone walls and slate rooves, moss-covered walls and gardens full of cabbages, leeks, pumpkins and the tail end of the summer crop eeking out the last of the sun’s ripening rays. Spanish pilgrim Miguel Angel shows us hot to roast chestnuts on the electric stove and we eat mountains of them, plucked fresh and fat from the track.

Camino gastronomico!

Buen provecho amigos,

Love, Wildgoose