Camino Primitivo to Santa Irene: Think about Such Things

23 May 2022 Thom Camino Primitivo, Pilgrim Reports

Another short day today, before tomorrow’s final push into Santiago. Last night, our albergue was overrun by a group of 29 Belgian high schoolers and their four teachers. They were all extremely polite, but up until all hours. The good news is, this meant we were well out and on the road before any of them were awake and hogging the bathrooms!

This morning we grabbed breakfast at a nearby café and were on the road at about 7:30 or so. It was a beautiful cool, mostly cloudy morning, perfect for walking.

The road out of Arzúa was packed earth and stone, wide and easy. Once again, we walked through lightly wooded countryside, with farmsteads and small villages every so often.

This morning I saw a Spanish family walking the Camino. Graying parents with their teenage daughter, who appeared to have Down syndrome. They walked slowly and were effusively friendly, with a hearty ¡buen Camino! for everyone that passed them. They walked hand-in-hand. It was very sweet.

We are walking in more and more holloways in Galicia. These are roads or paths that have been trodden by so many people for so long, that they have literally worn the path deep into the earth. In many cases, the government has graded the bottoms into flat roads, but there are still rounded cliffs sometimes as much is two or three meters high on either side.

I find them to be a deep and moving reminder of the tens of millions of pilgrims who walked this route over the last twelve hundred years.

These last few days since Lugo have been very pleasant walking, and much less spectacular (and difficult) than the preceding days. Much more of a saunter than a hike. And that’s OK. With the physically challenging part of our Camino out of the way early, we can enjoy these last few easy days into Santiago in a very different way.

A light rain started sometime after second breakfast. We put our ponchos on – a far cry from the hot weather of last week!

Walked for a while with a lovely young lady from Portland, Oregon named Mackenzie, who started walking in León. Great conversation, as she is discerning a conversion from Anglican to Catholicism.

It was positively pouring by the time we arrived at the Peregrina Biergarten. On three previous occasions, it has been a sunny beautiful day and the courtyard has been filled with folks drinking beer, and I walked right past. So of course today in the driving rain, with place practically deserted, we ducked in under the awning.

I don’t normally have a beer at 10 o’clock in the morning, but today was definitely an exceptional day.

We spent about 45 minutes under the awning waiting for the rain to die back a little. Eventually it did, and we headed off again in nothing worse than a moderate drizzle.

We passed more cafés today than we did on our first week on Camino. It’s crazy how much support this section has. Of course, there are a lot more pilgrims, too.

If you let it, the Camino is a contemplative Way, even on days like today where you are walking through the rain and mud, even as it gets more crowded with pilgrims, many of whom have only been walking a few days and so are still boisterous and full of adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm. Let their joyful noise wash over you and dissolve in the rain. Let it carry you forward, you who are a weary pilgrim after hundreds of kilometers.

And should you ever feel resentful about the bubbly freshness of these new pilgrims, with their day packs and their eager feet, remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard.

At several points today I noticed that a contemplative pilgrim had left messages the top of the Camino markers. Perhaps they will affect you in a similar way to the way they affected me.

Meanwhile, the rain. Sometimes a drizzle, sometimes a downpour, but rarely ending for long.

This evening we are staying at the Albergue Santa Irene, a cozy little place we stayed at four years ago. Unlike many places on this stretch of the Camino, it appears to have not changed at all.