#3 Camino Primitivo

Day 1 of the Camino…

I slept incredibly badly, and was mostly awake during the night. My mind just wouldn’t slow down and I consoled myself that at least my body was at rest.

Despite being incredibly excited about finally getting to start our Camino, I have to admit that my body and mind felt somehow exhausted throughout the day. There were times when I recognised the “sleepwalking” that had happened on particularly long days of my past Caminos.

When we arrived at our final stop of the day (a purposefully gentle schedule to start the Camino, although still a commendable 24k), I asked for Hamish’s patience while I caught up on admin for a while. At one point I gave in to exhaustion and when I woke up, Hamish said he’d been keeping himself happily occupied… so I am gladly handing over the rest of this post…

HAMISH:

While Su-a was busy organising musicians and music for our dear friend David Watkin’s memorial concert in October - i thought I’d help out by writing today’s blog, as Su-a’s surrogate writer, husband Hamish.

We woke up early today - it was still dark outside. Su-a was so excited to be starting the Camino at last, that she accidentally headbutted me, and then heeled me in the nuts (also accidentally). Wow, that’s one way to start to the day - but it worked - we were packed and down at reception within half an hour. The kindly folk from the hotel gave us a discount on our bill for our enforced extra night.

We set out right away along the empty Sunday morning streets of Oviedo city centre, the buildings illuminated in orange and pink light. We spotted 2 or 3 other pilgrims starting at the same time as us - there’s a look, you know - the rucksack and walking stick is a bit of a giveaway. “Buen Camino!” is the standard greeting.

We picked up some pastries at a local bakery, and loosely followed the trail of brass plate clam Camino shells embedded in the pavement. In our haste and enthusiasm we took a wrong turning after only 10 minutes. Our corrected route took us to a place where the high flats of the city centre ended abruptly, opening out into waste ground meadows of bramble, graffiti, fly-tipped rubbish and bulldozed concrete. A pair of cheeky footsteps were (are) forever printed in the concrete of the recently resurfaced single track road.

Instead of heading due northwest on the main trail, like most other pilgrims, we had decided on the optional 2km detour up the hill to the north, to take in two wonderful, rare, well preserved pre-Roman churches - so, so old.

People have been coming up the hill to worship here for well over a thousand years. How many lives, how many families, how many ages?

Such huge LEAVES in the woodlands: Fig trees, sweet chestnut and English walnut.

We took it a bit far with the tree identification when we both recognised an elder tree, and began feasting on the berries.

“Su-a, are you sure you can eat these?” Her teeth were black with the many handfuls she had just gobbled.

Quick Google. Shit. Toxic - the seeds contain poison. Spit it out.

I made us drink all of our water and eat our snack bars (in case we needed any stomach contents to be sick with)! Fortunately the warnings of potential scoots, nausea and vomiting never happened at all. I just felt a bit ‘Shetland ferry’ for a while.

Ponies, donkeys, vicious barking dogs, crawing cockerels, beautiful dairy cows with horns and huge Disney eyelashes. Neat little acorn hats scattered along the verges, and heather, oak, maple, beech, dog-rose hips, dancing ash, but mostly cider trees!

It was a little disturbing to see that most of the wilder woodlands are ravaged by creeping crawling ivy - such an ugly strangling parasite.

Since it was a Sunday, the first three cafés were all completely shut. We didn’t hesitate to stop at the first open pub and chatted to our first fellow pilgrim - a French Canadian woman called Julie.

Su-a is a battle hardened warrior of 2 Caminos, I am just a rookie and would have missed many of the signs - yellow arrows and Camino posts, which are a little bit like miniature Scottish munro trig points with a blue and yellow scallop shell.

We reach the hostel at Paladin - posh hostel with a bar and restaurant marquee. Still has the 8 bunks per room and tiny basic bathroom vibe though.

There were 3 women from Spain, a young Czech man walking alone, 3 Californians on a 60th bday walk and 8 Dutch pals (they’ve been here before and the charismatic (if a little cheesy) owner from the Basque Country sits next to them with his feet up on the table to take their food order!

(Su-a has now passed out on my shoulder.)

By the time we head to bed, two tired pilgrims are already asleep.

Lesson #1 - don’t wait until the bunk room is dark and full of sleeping folk to unpack your rucksack. Up at dawn tomorrow.

Hamish’s first official Camino waymarker…

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#2 Camino Primitivo