friends along the way

before i leave the camino permanently in this blog i want to mention and describe some of the people we met along the way. we became a kind of fellowship of pain at times. we were also a group of outsiders who were all equally lost and often needing help from each other to find the way. for a group of relative strangers the joy we experienced when we found each other in the next village or at the next albergue was out of all proportion to the length of time we had known each other. similarly, the sadness when we said goodbye was with us for a while. i don't want to forget these people and i want you to know them a little too.

anya a german girl we met on our first night who wisely reminded us to take food with us over the pyrenees (who would have thought there were no shops anywhere along the way)

henning and his son thomas we met them on our first night. they were from denmark. thomas was walking with his father for the first week only then returning to denmark but henning was planning to walk all the way. we met up with henning all along the way and he became a companion whom we always enjoyed seeing. we last saw him in galicia. apart from the walk we had an extra connection with henning because his wife is australian, actually visiting her mother in frenchs forrest while he was on the walk. his favourite meal was his wife's roast lamb

our german friend who we shared breakfast with in pamplona and bid farewell to in carrion de los condes. he was such a cheerful energetic friendly person. i almost cried to say goodbye to him there.

after roncesvalles we walked in tandem with two spanish couples who were very friendly to us. the first was a couple who we seemed to bump into regularly for the first week. they were very proud of their heritage and told us all sorts of things about whatever town we were in, most memorably los arcos. the other couple was older. the wife was canadian and the husband spanish. the wife was particularly interested to talk with us because their daughter is studying in sydney later this year. she wanted to know things about Sydney like "is it safe?" and "what about the spiders?". they were having a roaring good time on the walk and we realised they were doing a few things differently to us. they drank beer on their stops or wine from their wine skins (it seems to dull the pain), smoked during their breaks and they had their packs taxied every day. both these couples also slept in good hotels every night rather than the pilgrim hostels. in time we adopted a few, but not all, of their strategies.

shin yu bin from korea. she was studying at university and took the walk to improve her spanish but also spoke english. shared some food with her early in the walk and overlapped with her throughout. last saw her early during our walk through galicia

aussies we met antoinette in los arcos and last saw her in a cafe at portos in galicia. it was nice to have a chat with her from time to time to exchange news about the family, the blisters and the aches and pains. we met another aussie, an older man from balmain, in a cafe in oncina del camino. we had a coffee with him, dinner together that night in villar de mazarife and morning tea with him the next morning in villavante. he was taking things slowly. different members of his family came to walk with him from time to time and he would take occasional weeks off to go to madrid and recover along the way. he was full of stories of people he had met along the way. who knows, we may bump into him again in sydney some time. we met a polish couple from canberra for just one day when we walked from barbadelo to hospital da cruz. we were saying goodbye to hinnley and when he had gone they leaned across from their table to tell us how good it was to hear an aussie accent. and we thought we had turned into europeans. they were doing well. they told us that st james had told them to taxi their packs every day, stay in hotels and not to walk more than 25 kms a day. when you have the saint whisper in your ear, what else are you supposed to do?

the french we first met this threesome in calzada del coto and waved goodbye to them on the path approaching molinaseca. only the wife spoke english but she was so warm and friendly that it was a pleasure to be with all three of them. they were older than us and suffered more than us but just got on with things.

we met another french couple in ventas de naron. she was very friendly and we enjoyed the last few days meeting up in the cafes and hostels along the way. we found ourselves in trouble together as we were chastised by one on the cafe owners for eating some of our own snacks with our coffee instead of buying her produce. that does sound like poor form but in our defence i should say she didn't actually have the things we asked for even though they were advertised. as things happened we walked into santiago with them, attended the mass together and kept seeing each other as we walked around the city that afternoon so it was nice to see some friendly and familiar faces that afternoon.