Them's The Breaks

Monday 30 Sept   Palas de Rei to Ribadiso      25.8 km

The excitement of the final few days continued to build, and the desire to finish the pilgramage with the Camino family that we had built over the past month was getting stronger. At 7am the Smiths, the Valvos, Cheryl and Nadine and three of the Dooley Heaths gathered for coffee at the Buen Camino before heading out on the morning walk. These people truly felt like family to me, or at least like friends I had known a lifetime. Nick and I would chat about this at the end of the day, how quickly one made connections on the walk and the warm feelings one had just from being around them.

And speaking of things I had become attached to, cafe con leche. For those of you not as fluent as me in Spanish, it means "coffee with milk". But it is way more than that. Back home I use coffee as an excuse to have a peanut butter cookie, which incidentally the best in Toronto are served at the Tango Palace on Queen Street East. Coffee on it's own, I can take it or leave it, and for me " I need a coffee" means, "I want a cookie". Other than that coffee is something to have when I'm bored or an excuse to take a break from a meeting. But cafe con leche, how did I ever survive without it. You take what I believe is expresso, add milk that is heated and frothed , sprinkle a little cinnamon on it and voila, you end up with a synergistic beverage that I am fairly certain is made sweeter by some kind of magic Camino incantation. When I get back home, gonna have to go see Val at Tango to find out if he knows how to do that. These things fill you up, provide an energy boost, create great conversation, help take your mind of blisters and for all I know increases fertility. Not that that is an issue at my age.

At first glance todays route is a fairly easy one dropping gently, ha ha, 230 m over the 26 km. But as I have stated before, the path always throws a few curves at you, with some  steep sections that do not show up on the guide book profiles. Doesn't matter though, by this point the Camino knows we have all figured out it is not there to stop us, but challenge self imposed limitations,  and there is nothing it can throw at us that will turn us back. Nothing. That is the biggest lesson of the entire journey, and I believe why this pilgrimage has endured for over a millennium. We are limited only by that which we believe limits us.

" I looked my demons in the eye laid bare my chest said do your best, destroy me"                             Ray LaMontagne  

Mary Lou and I had come to look forward to our walks with Maya and Tom. They both love to talk so every now and then you need a break, but they are two wonderful kids to have around, and they brought out the grand maternal and paternal instincts in both of us. Seven year old Maya spent much of the morning with us, and we had a blast using my walking sticks as batons, and showing her how to balance one in the air at the end of your finger ( a skill learned from my old junior hockey days).

Much of the path is through heavily forested areas that belies the fact that that it is following closely highway N-547. For the most part the walking was easy, the air was cool and time went by quickly. There were a few issues however. Because of the wet cool weather the past few days, there were many sections of the path that were quite slippery. Towards the bottom of the downhill run into Melide, I hooked up with my buddy Bruno and we were chatting as a lady walking in front of us slipped on the rocks and crashed heavily on her butt, having some difficulty getting up. We rushed down to help her, and after getting her on her feet she was insistent there was no problem. Though we both backed off, cause when you have been told to" leave me alone" you leave them alone, there is no way she got out of that unscarred  having watched just how hard she hit. That wouldn't be the last fall in this location today.

Melide has a population of around 8,000 and is a clean, prosperous modern city that has maintained much of its medieval charm and layout. It falls at about the halfway point of the days walk. As our group was approaching the outskirts, Catherine received a phone call informing her that two of her Australian friends had fallen on the same hill as the other woman, one fracturing her ankle and the other her wrist. In the spur of the moment Catherine, who remember was a nurse, decided to abandon the walk for the day to meet the two women at the hospital and help navigate through the Spanish medical system. A completely selfless action that put her Compostella at risk. Catherines only comment was " I'll worry about that later." A classy move by a classy woman. In the end, the leg was fractured in multiple places and pins had to be installed with no travel for five weeks, and the arm of the other was broken. Catherine and Maya headed out by taxi to the hospital, while Tom continued on the walk with us.

Again, with a distance of almost 26 km, the last few seem to take forever. The scale of the Brierly guide doesn't really allow one to gauge distance with any degree of accuracy, and it looked like we had actually walked by our stop for the day. The rain predicted for the day was just starting at this point. For a moment we contemplated backtracking, but instead decided to stop the truck coming down the road and ask for directions. Lo and behold it belonged to the Las Caminantes albergue, which just happened to be the place reserved for tonights stay. The driver said no problem its a little over a km down the road. And by a little over a km he meant +3 km, and all of us were exhausted by the time we arrived.

Ribadiso is a small little hamlet that dates back to the 6th century, and has been serving pilgrims pretty much since the start of it all. It has less than a dozen buildings, with a couple of albergues and one very fine restaurant. With a lot of afternoon naps going on  everyone was well rested when supper time hit. Our little group had grown to over twenty people, including Catherine who had taxied from the hospital to rejoin her family. Much to the chagrin of the young waiter, we arranged the tables into a "U" shape so we could be one big happy family. Young Tom felt I had been rude in ignoring the waiters pleas, but I explained to him sometimes people need a little coaxing to do the right thing. It was a very special evening, with our Camino family and some new friends. There were people from Spain, France, Israel, USA, England, Australia, Hungary, Ireland, Holland and Canada all chatting and laughing and eating and drinking, feeling good and enjoying each others company immensely.

Nick and I sitting in the corner perused the group and looked at each other with an understanding just how special the moment was. He whispered to me "this is what communion is", and I believe he was right. The night reminded me of one of our family dinners, where I would see my grandfather sit back silently watching his family interact, not saying a word, completely content to just be with his loved ones. I call that a quiet love. Nick and I started singing Amazing Grace and before long the entire table was belting it out in unison. Very special moment indeed.