Professor Higgins Had it Wrong

This pilgrim is here to tell you that the rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain. For today, anyway, the rain in Spain stayed mainly on the route between Ourense and Cea, our route for the day.

We left the hotel this morning in a light rain, with our rain gear and pack covers on, and faced a light to steady rain pretty much the whole day. I say pretty much, because the rain had slowed enough when we got to Gammy hill outside of Ourense, we were able to shed the rain gear long enough for the trek up the hill.

The climb we'd been thinking about (read: dreading) started a couple of miles outside of Ourense, right after a one way tunnel. This tunnel, about 100 meters long, ran under a train track, and had stop lights at each end for vehicles to take turns going through. It had a separate walk button for pedestrians that kept the green light on longer (I'm thinking), to let us walkers have the time we needed. moved through this pretty quickly to make sure we were outta there when the light changed.

That's where the uphill started. Think of walking up one of the streets in San Francisco (maybe Lombard street, but without as many curves), for 35 minutes. With crazy Spanish drivers heading down the hill toward you twice as fast as you'd like to see it. But we did it, and only stopped once.

We stopped briefly part way up to talk briefly to another pair of American pilgrims, a couple of ladies from Oregon. They had stayed in Ourense the night before, in the hostel (alburgue, in Spanish.)

This is the more traditional way of doing the Camino, and it sounds like the accommodation equivalent of being massaged with a cat o'nine tails. The two women spoke of a room with 24 bunk beds, paper sheets, and a kitchen facility without utensils or coffee cups. I couldn't bear to ask them about the shower facilities. But I did try to commiserate and told them that although the hotel we stayed in the night before had four stars, there was no sign of a turn down service.

We then proceeded quickly ahead up the hill, not giving either of them any chance to draw a weapon.

This stretch of the way is a combination of backroads with little traffic, dirt roads, old, long disused roads, and trails. But a common trait of all of them today was that they all pointed pretty much in a line to the northwest, straight for Santiago de Compostela. Other roads would cross, and our way would join and leave other roads, but our direction was pretty much in a line. I can imagine this is the route created by early pilgrims focused on getting to Santiago at a time when there was no other infrastructure like farms, houses, and towns, to cause them to change direction.

Around halfway through the day, we started seeing handmade signs along the path for “Casa Cesar.” When we got into a little village of maybe a half dozen homes, there was Cesar, waiting for us outside of a small room on the ground floor of his house. He motioned to us to drop out packs and rain gear and come into his peligrino room.

Cesar has apparently been welcoming pilgrims and offering some rest and refreshment for some time. The walls of the room are covered with pictures of previous guests. His offerings were Coca Cola, some pastries, homemade cabbage soup, and his homemade wine. Between the two of us we tried some of each. Soon after we arrived a couple of Cesar's local friends came in. Between Cesar and his friends they probably had as much English as we do Spanish. So, we had a great time sharing Cesar's wine, gesturing, and saying “si, si, si” when one of us understood a word someone said. After a while another pilgrim came in, a lady from Hungary, and she happily joined in our “conversation.”

When we got ready to leave, I asked Cesar how much we owed him for his hospitality, and he motioned to a small milk can that said “donations” in a few languages. “For the milk” Cesar smiled and said. What a great experience.

We went back out into the rain with another two hours to go, straight up the road and trail to the village of Cea.