Najera to Santa Domingo
I started the day with Katarina from Slovakia. The first part is nice climbing up through pines, then we came to the great plains. This is hard country to walk when hot but we were lucky with the weather.
We came to Azofra and took the track to Cirueña, a long valley and then an ascent.
We got there and stopped for a coffee and some tapas. It was mostly down hill to Santa Domingo de la Calzada "Where the roasted hen sang" and I decided I would stop here in the same nunnery albergue that I had stopped before.
Then I had been walking with Gina an Irish lass and had asked the nun behind the glass screen in my not so good Spanish for a double bed for us instead of two beds!!! The look on that nun's face had been memorable and I told Katarina the story as we arrived. She laughed and said she didn't think they would remember! I asked the nun this time correctly and was less intimidated than before, as she was not dressed in the severe black and white this time. Now I am not saying she did remember me, she told me to put a donation in the box, wrote 11 on a piece of paper and said that was my bed number. "Up stairs on the right" she added as I took the paper. Up the old stairs I went now remembering this was the same old part of the old building I had been in before. Several rooms with ancient floors sloping in several directions loaded with bunk beds but no number 11. I went to the corner room. Yes this was where we had bunked before, I chuckled to myself. Looking around I found number 11, it was the same bunk I had slept in before!!! Katerina was in the hall outside the door, last time Gina had been given a bunk in here. To make it even stranger, I was told later there is a new part with a hundred new beds in another section of the building! My washing done I put it on a rack under a shelter in the patio but the little sun would not dry it much. It looked as if it would rain again so I could not leave it outside. There were several people in the patio writing journals and drinking beer.
I joined Horst, a German I had met, and we chatted for a while and were joined by a Swedish priest, a lady so therefore not a Catholic. She was travelling with a Frenchman that was quite obviously enamoured by her and I think she too was very impressed with him. It was a joy to see them together. The camino often brings the most unusual people together and creates a very strong bond. This was such a camino romance. Both were on their first camino. I told of my other walks and the Ebro one. We all also discussed the camino and the religious influence of it on our lives. I told her of some of experiences and she seemed to think I was telling the truth and had been touched at times by the power that most call God. I guess in a way I was here looking to confirm that. I had never felt at such ease with a priest before. Here was I chatting religion in a nunnery patio with a priest and her boyfriend!!! We all had to go to do things and she said she would like to meet again to talk further. I decided to see if I could find somewhere to eat in the town came across a café restaurant and had a coffee but they were closing and would open later for meals at seven. I said I would return then as I thought the Spanish potato omelette very good that I had eaten. But back in town I changed my mind, I had seen a kitchen as I went to the patio at the albergue. I decided to cook and bought things to do so. There were two girls already using the tiny two ring stove and I managed to commandeer a little bit of marble work top and started cooking green beans potatoes and a chop with my spirit stove. When I sat down, the girls kindly offered me a glass of wine. I was very pleased, as I had forgotten to get any. The priest and her gentleman came in and proceeded to prepare dinner too. The girls had finished theirs and left and I was asked to join the other table. I was still eating my sweet of yoghurt and banana so I crossed over to their table and we drank more wine and talked till an early bedtime. A good Spanish friend had text me, to say she had seen our web page and would be starting her camino the next day from Somos, nearer Santiago, I text back "Animo".END DAY 17 = approx. 21 km Sub Total = 50 km Total = 387.9 km
