Countries, Pilgrimage

As Chivas regal and we’re drinking in the Camino

And the bottle tops are mounting up on Alan & Peter’s table… As Chivas regal and we’re drinking in the Camino.

As Chivas being our rural idyll billet for the night, just up the hill and off the Way.

And the Spanish name for the farmhouse’s permanent residents, the guests.

That Alan and Peter are Australian is unsurprising.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie: The Aussies, me and Big Brother

And takes me back to Top Deck days on a repurposed double decker bus to the Oktoberfest in Munich.

When Rambo would bite the tops off the bottles when we lost the bottle opener.

We pass the late afternoon in the sun sharing war stories of this trek and others.

Hakes and hikes

Here for the beard: With Davide

 

Julio and Davide run an easy, informal tab, where you mount up bottle caps into a mountain and pay on departure.

I feast in the evening on two hakes, patates (chips) and green veg with Brusssel sprouts.

Table is set: Bring on the hake

And the next day roll back down the hill to rejoin the Camino Portugues.

A couple of kilometres down into the village of Arcade and then back into the woods en route to Pontevedra.

Big Brother is watching

A short stretch: My lucky black cat

There will be more Aussies, Americans, South Americans and ten likely lassies from my hometown of Glasgow.

With whom I spend far too much time for Big Brother’s liking and he marches ahead.

Each time their own and every Camino is your own.

I form more attachments along the Way including a lucky black cat.

Out of puff: The ascent takes it out of you

And fill a second page on my Camino passport and splash on the holy water in a Wayside chapel dating back to the 1690s.

We will meet up again at the Galicia Palace in Pontevedra at the end of our 16kms stretch.

Only 70kms to go to Santiago de Compostella and, yes, we’ll…

MEET YOU ON THE ROAD

 

 

 

Countries, Europe, Pilgrimage

Goaaaaaal… our Camino Portugues Arcade Game

Day 3: And we’ll get there, it’s the day after the Spain game and this is our goaaaaal… our Camino Portugues Arcade Game.

The biblical deluge did arrive last night and gracias Dios it was when we were safely off the Way.

And in our billet at Hotel Azul in O Porriño in Spanish Galicia.

Walking in his shadow: Jim and Ed

But anxious about our next leg, the 23km undulating and longest stretch yet, to hilltop Arcade.

A sports hack half my career and a football fan all my life I didn’t expect.

To be trudging through the puddles to find a bar for the game.

Or giving up on the mission to watch Lamine Yamal and the world champs beat Croatia 4-1.

Only there may have been an insight on how the locals view the national team in this graffito on the wall.

Local pride: Galician activism

Now our own wee team Scotland, the last to beat Spain a whole two years ago, have found it uphill ever since.

Like today’s 12km climb on my Camino Ways odyssey.

Thankfully Hotel Azul have served us, that’s me and Big Brother Ed, the breakfast of champions.

The first supper: To set me up for the day

You see, the beauty, of course, in a longer leg on the Camino is more time to take in the beauty.

Although I could certainly do with longer legs for those steep inclines.

And the bigger distance affords more chance to spend time with fellow peregrinos.

Where’s the little donkey? At the bottom of As Chivas

Like American brother and sister Mark and Mary who bookend this stretch down from our farmhouse billet As Chivas

With Mark offering to adopt the name Joseph temporarily for this money shot coastal picture over the valley.

Mark billing me as Jesus on account of my ‘Jesus is my Home Boy’ T-shirt.

The thing is though as a James Joseph I offer to double job.

It’s a family affair

Three Jemeses: Walk into a bar

I am walking 11 years after my first Camino.

This time with my big brother, the third of the Three Wise Men, the other brother is back in England.

Caminos have always been familial affairs and Ed and I break bread with American dad and lad Jim and Jamie… well, it is St James’s Way.

Sheltering from the morning’s delayed showers in a path side cafe.

Where naturally we get another stamp for our Camino passports which will qualify us for a certificate.

When we get to the end of our 100-mile trek to Santiago di Compostella.

Peregrinos, or pilgrims, will be lucky if their walk is in gentle breeze as opposed to blistering sun or pelting rain.

Carmen and the Hunchback of Rotterdam

Rain oe’r me: Come rain or shine

God is watering his garden today but we are prepared with foldaway waterproofs.

While Dutch Nonda is covered too with a poncho covering both her and her rucksack.

The Hunchback of Rotterdam Filipino Carmen calls her… she’ll cut herself one of these days, she’s so sharp.

And despite rolling her ankle on an early leg Carmen is off now at a fair lick.

We’ll see her again, God willing, like we have Mark and Mary.

That’s the Camino for you.

MEET YOU ON THE ROAD