Day 21 Foncebadon - Ponferrada

Friday 17 April 2009

Via CRUZ DE FERRO – MANJARIN- EL ACEBO – RIEGO DE AMBROS – MOLINASECA
27.5km

I had company again today, much to my annoyance.
I was trying to keep positive about the situation, but in all honesty it was starting to drive me mental. I tried to walk slowly, but he slowed down. When I sped up, he matched my speed. I had so many coffee stops in hopes he would continue on his way without me, but no luck. I was starting to get really annoyed, but then I thought that maybe this was a test of the Camino, to help me become a more patient person. And maybe he was ‘sent’ as a guide to assist me through a day that proved to be difficult and potentially dangerous. .. At any rate, it helped me to think like that – if everything happens for a reason, maybe the reason Johan was with me was to help me through these hurdles…

Anyway, aside from that issue, it was a great day. I started the day with an amazing breakfast of muesli and yoghurt, lovely, crusty toast with homemade jam, and strong black coffee, and then I set off in the beautiful white winter wonderland that that awaited me outside. The snow had covered everything in a stunning blanket and I had to pinch myself that I was actually seeing this with my own eyes, rather than in a postcard.

The first stop of the day was Cruz De Ferro, which is a huge tall cross, originally erected to help Pilgrims find their way across the mountains.

It is a tradition to bring a stone with you from home. You put all of your worries and bad things from your life into this stone, which you add to a huge cairn below the cross. I didn’t know about this tradition when I started my journey, so I didn’t have a stone from home. When Otmar discovered this a week or so previously, he spent days looking for the perfect stone for me, and found the perfect one – incredibly smooth and round except for a chip out of one side, which seemed fitting. And I liked the idea that it had come from the road of this journey – in the words of Ani Di Franco, “The world is my oyster, The road is my home”… So, I took great joy in placing “worry stone” (or “shit stone” as Otmar was calling it) on top of pile of thousands (millions?) of other stones. I think this moment was one of my most special on the Camino, and it is one of my favourite memories from the journey.

After leaving Cruz de Ferro, it was quite a slog through the snow capped mountains, and at one point it even started snowing. I felt so lucky to be walking through such a beautiful scene - it was almost like a dream – and it was made even better with the memory of the horrible Mesita still fresh on my mind. I wonder if that serves as a type of lesson – you always have to go through the bad to get to the good...

There was a very strenuous downhill section – 400m down in 4.5km, which was very hard on the knees and caused me a bit of pain (courtesy of an old netball injury) later on in the evening. Another Ani lyric sprung to my mind repeatedly on this day: “It’s all downhill from here baby, so naturally I can’t stay”. I think I can find lyrics suitable for every step of the journey, courtesy of her.

Johan and I stopped for lunch in Molinaseca, where we proceeded to drink our way through a bottle of wine, and as a result the last 8km to Ponferrada seemed very easy and incredibly hard, all at once. Everything seemed very funny for some reason… We finally arrived at 5.30 – quite late, due to being caught in a flash storm and having to seek shelter. At the Albergue I was pleased to see that they had separate sections for men and women, so I was able to escape Johan for the night. I was sharing a room with other girls, including Rebecca from New York, who would feature heavily in the rest of my journey. We went to the supermercado together and stoked up on supplies before sharing dinner together in the kitchen of the Albergue and having an early night to rest our weary bones.


I went to sleep hoping to continue on my solo journey in the morning, as Johan was thinking of spending an extra day in Ponferrada to do some sightseeing… To be continued!