Via de la Plata

 

My third Camino, in 2012, was a real challenge...over 1000km starting in Seville and walking right up through Spain to Santiago. Once again I met up with my friend Kari, although Harriet wisely refrained from joining us. It took us two months solid walking, through hills, valleys, plains and every other type of terrain you can imagine, and through all kinds of weather. I´m happy to say we walked every inch of the way, had loads of adventures and a wonderful time.

We made friends early on with two fellow pilgrims we kept bumping into, when they kindly offered to swap our top bunks for their lower ones in an albergue. Their story is an interesting one. They were both from France, with very little English but we managed to communicate pretty well. The older chap, probably in his late twenties, was a social worker. The younger one I was amazed to discover was only fifteen. He was over six foot tall and heavily built, and looked several years older. He was an offender, with anger issues, and had been given a choice between walking the Camino with a social worker or prison. I think this is a remarkable scheme and much more likely to be effective than a prison sentence with all that entails. Apparently several countries in Europe have similar schemes. Of course we never asked what he had done. We enjoyed their company over the next couple of months virtually on a daily basis, with no problems at all and in fact became quite close.

 Amongst our adventures was sleeping in some odd places. Above is my bed for the night on the floor of a bar. As you can see I was lent a thin mattress, with my sleeping bag on top and my small bag of clean clothes for a pillow. When we arrived in the village everywhere was full and it was too late and too far to walk to the next place. We ate in this bar which was packed with locals watching a football game on TV and luckily they let us stay for the night, although we had to wait for all the customers to leave before being able to bed down. My grandchildren can´t believe the things I get up to!