Sun 20/05/07
Chiprana to Escatrón
I saw the sunrise and took a photo of the mist. The rain had stopped, the fields looked soggy and wet and the ground around me was all soft and boggy. Luckily inside my rucksack everything was dry. I now changed into dry clothes, I pushed the sleeping bag into its little sack, and put everything inside the rucksack, except some socks and pants that I had left out side last night to dry! These I collected up and wringing them out as much as I could, I pinned them on the outside. Last I draped the wet tent around it, and strapped it there. I was at last ready to go. I understood from my guidebook that I was to cross a railway line twice but I think this might have been a high-tension electric line and I might have misinterpreted. 
I was in the middle of god knows where. At one point I was crossing open 
ground and praying to see some indication of the camino. At last an arrow but it was still not too clear if I was going the right way. I came to a highway and followed it. My book said follow the A224 but this was the A221 had I stuffed up on the translation again? A signpost said Chiprana was 33k in one direction, where as my book said I should cover 17.5 to Escatron!! I started down one road but felt it was going in the wrong direction so went back and this time saw that it was another way, some confusion with a 'place of Escatron' rather than the town itself!!! I found the track and later came to a fork, left was signed camino but straight ahead was a steep bank that scrambler motorcycles had used. I decided to climb up and see if it was a shortcut. At the top I took a chance and sure enough soon came to a road and a bridge with an arrow. I crossed the bridge and turned down a dirt track, but soon came back onto the road and crossed over and down another track. I disturbed a lady sunbathing in her garden, oops! She pulled a wrap around herself as she came across to see what the noise was as my feet crunched on the gravel as I walked by. I pretended I hadn't seen anything! Back on the highway again I walked and eventually almost reached Escatron. Now taking the marked camino I walked down a little used track and came to an old Roman bridge and also a few wooden picnic tables almost hidden in long grass. The camino path went on alongside the river, past the end of the b
ridge. It had been bulldozed recently and was quite muddy. I met a couple of chaps that had been fishing and were packing up. A large fish, a bit like a pike, lay on the ground at the bac
k of their van. I chatted and got instructions that I would find better and cheaper accommodation and food if I ignored the town and stayed by the river. I came onto a road and there ahead was a nice hostel (El Embarcadero) facing the river and a jetty. 
I went in and asked how much and would I be able to dry my things here. I had a coffee while waiting for the boss. I was shown a nice room and there was a long balcony type passageway along the front and here he said I could dry my things on the rail. It was quite breezy and they all dried well and I put them all away by nightfall. I had a nice meal and felt much better and walked into the old town but as it was Sunday everywhere was closed of course!!! 
The book said there was a monastery for peregrinos but I was lucky stopping at the El Embarcadero because the monastery, a few km further on is now a posh hotel and has no peregrino accommodation. This I found out the following day!
Text: 8.33pm Maisie – At least u got people there & get clean. END DAY 5 = approx. 17.5kms.
Total approx. 108kms according to book END WEEK 1
WEEK 2
21/05/07
Escatrón to Quinto 
I walked away from my comfortable hostel at 7am and
as the bar wouldn't open till 8 I went without my coffee, always a hard thing for me on camino. It soon joined a road that crossed the river and I took a few nice photos looking back towards the hostel as I next took a junction to my right. The way now went back down river with the hostel on the other bank. I felt sure it was just to look at the monastery and could just see the towers of it in front of me, and it was. I looked at the imposing building and the smart cars parked outside and then looked for the arrow that my guidebook said was by the left of the front entrance. 
I couldn't find it so went through the massive door, just as I anticipated it was very posh inside. I looked around, in front through glass doors was the courtyard but down to my right I could see into another room with a large reception desk. A man was speaking in English trying to pay his bill with a cash card and the man behind the desk could speak no English at all. I went through and tried to help but there was not much I could do as he had to get cash from somewhere. Now it was my turn and I asked for information on the monastery and was it possible to get a credential here. Well the receptionist knew what I was talking about and looked, but couldn't find anything resembling the credential. Apologising saying he was just holding the fort for someone else he rang another man in the next village but this man couldn't help either. I was told that there were plans to one day put a peregrino albergue here but he and the other man (both were connected to the church I think) were restoring a house in the next village and that was more likely to be completed as one, one day. The monastery was a four star hotel now, I got him to stamp my guidebook anyway. Ok so I was now allowed to go and look in the rather lovely patio in the centre of the building but unwashed peregrinos might feel a little out of place here! 
I left, then remembered I hadn't found the arrow and after looking again to no avail I went back in. The chap kindly left his post this time and came out into the forecourt and walked about halfway back up the car park then pointed to the high bank and garden and said"There".
I looked but at first saw nothing then noticed the narrow flight of steps and a blob of yellow
"Oh! Gracias"
I waved goodbye and climbed the steep steps and past a stone wall and up a steep hill behind which joined a track across the mountainside. As anticipated, up and down through rough country, I came to the road again that would if I had turned left, taken me soon back to the bridge. I crossed the road and followed the arrows and soon carefully climbed down a steep path and crossed the river again into Sastago. Here I had a coffee and a tuna bocadillo (sandwich). It was only half past nine so I was doing well but from here the river meandered and so did the camino. Often I was high up on the edge of the valley where it is almost desert like and walking on new tarmac roads.
Then back again down hard on the river edge, on a tiny path with the dry scrubby cliff of the valley walls towering over you. Then the river would move back away leaving the land be farmed again and the camino was once again be farm tracks. 
I took a short cut I think at one point sticking to a new road and heading for the village I could see in the distance. Anyway it was the right village. By 2pm I was nearing Vililla de Ebro and text Maisie. I was meaning to buy food and get water and stop on the far side of this town. This town, if I remember right it was a strange sort of place and I was too early for the shops to be open. I stopped for a vino de verano (wine and lemonade) in a old fashioned bar full of elderly men. As I drank my cool wine and told the attractive barmaid my story she told me she was Cuban. I misheard Cordoba and said I had been there but we soon laughed as we realised the mistake. All alone with no family she had arrived in Madrid a few years before, but hated the big city. Somehow she had found this remote little village. There must have been an incredible story here but I had to got on. I wished her luck and happiness and gave Marcia a koala and my email. Maybe one day I would hear her story in full. She filled my water bottles and I left her sitting there behind the bar with only old men to chat to.The next village was Gelisa and I stopped here and waited for the shops to open in a café in the main square. It was here that I got in conversation with some ladies, I tried to tell them how my camino had started in Barcelona. I thought one or two looked at me a little strangely but at the time I thought nothing of it. I had used the words 'Robo' this means 'I rob' and I believe that moment was to haunt me for days!!!
Leaving the bar I bought bread, beans and a little cabrita chop (young goat) in a tiny butcher's shop in a back street and then left town and crossed the river. I had to go under a tall modern convex bridge. It looked like rain so I stopped under it and against a huge ugly concrete pillar cooked my nice dinner and ate it sitting on a lump of cold concrete hoping the threatening rain would pass over.
A little of the rain was falling, as the guardia drove past and I waved to them but it soon stopped again so having eaten I headed after them down the track by the side of the river.
That rainstorm was still threatening to fall as I got to Quinto. I chatted to another lady sweeping her doorstep and she gave me a bottle of water. I in return gave her a koala and cheerily set off again. I passed through this town because the cheapest hostel I could find was 25E a night and not very friendly. Ok I could camp as long as it didn't rain too much I decided. I was worried but after scaling a pit that looked as if it was an ecological dig I came across a big stack of huge pipes. They were alongside the railway line, about one-km or so out of town. Here was room for my tent and as long as they never started work too early shifting them with a tractor or a big truck. Mmm! I would be ok I hoped. There was a lot of wood that had been used to hold the packs of pipes together, I collected enough to form a solid base to stand the tent on so keeping it up off the ground. I put the tent over them and managed to peg it in place. Now I w
ent back to the pipe rubbish and dragged out a huge piece of the plastic that the pipes had been wrapped in. From this I cut a piece that would go over the tent completely. I pegged one side down and made it so I could pull it over the tent as I got in. Now what about those tractors? My tent would look like the rest of the rubbish, shucks!!! I got a few bits more of the timber and tried to prop them up at the corners hoping someone would look before driving his truck over this heap of rubbish. Well it never looked much safer but I crawled into bed for the night. Very little rain to test my camp but that wood was hard and those damn trains roared by a few feet away all night!!!END DAY 6 = 31 Km's Total = 139 km's according to book
