NOT A GOOD DAY…

Today was not a good walking day for us. Oh, it looked beautiful, in fact as beautiful a day as we have seen on the Camino, but it wasn’t a good day.

(By the way, i’m at the mercy of the Camino internet which is sometimes good and sometimes not so good. It is not allowing me to download photos at the moment. You’ll have to visualize a beautiful setting and the rest.)

Our walk is officially over, but we decided to walk back to Santiago rather than take a bus like most do. We are certainly not against taking a bus in this case, but we decided to walk because we still have a few days to go. We were going to walk from Muxia to a small town called Dumbria. It would be a nice short day…or so we thought.

The day started like any other day. We were tired. We did not want to get up, but off we went, eventually feeling great as we always do by mid-morning. The views are nice. The weather is perfect, and we feel pretty strong. The waymarkers (yellow arrows) on this Camino day, that are used to guide people along are meant for the people walking the opposite way, toward Muxia and not the other way around. What one does is just follow them backwards. Sounds easy enough. Plus there would still be a few markers guiding us along, although this Camino stretch is known for not being well marked. I am in complete agreement with that statement.

Things seemed okay for a while…a short while unfortunately. We couldn’t find very many markers to help us. It was one wrong turn after another, after another. If nothing else it could have been a nice day to get lost, but after a while it started to become ridiculous. We probably got lost about seven or eight times. Each time losing ten to twenty minutes. What should have been an easy four hour day turned into a long seven and a half hour day…and it got hot…and hilly.

I could have been better reading the guide book, but even that gets tricky as it tries to guide you over many miles. Patricia was quite understanding as I continued to fail to follow the guide.

One tries to maintain a good sense of humor and good spirits, but it becomes more difficult as the clock keeps ticking away quickly and you don’t have a clue as to where you are. We were tired and we were lost. You stand there frustrated unable to think as you try to think. We tried to support each other until even that fell apart.

Finally we walked into Dumbria, found our not so nice hotel with a not so nice host, who didn’t feel like getting us any snacks as we drank our cold beers. I think a local customer who was there, guilted her into giving us a little bread and cheese.

Patricia, tired, decided not to have dinner and stayed in the room. I went down to the dark dining area, and actually a decent meal of chicken and potatoes. Not all days on the Camino are good ones. Some are just plain lousy. This was one of them.

 

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