rewind one week

blogs are supposed to be current and not accounts of everything i did last week but i could not get an internet connection for the week leading up to santiago and i want to at least give you some account of our last week of walking.

for our last week we walked through the region of galicia. galicia is a rural area dotted with small hamlets. it is a very lush area with a celtic heritage. it takes pride in its difference to other regions in spain and cherishes its relative isolation.

in some ways we felt plunged back into our first week in spain as the hamlets we walked through were so small that they frequently didn't have any kind of shop. we had to plan our food (and toilet stops) very carefully for the day and although the villages were frequently close enough to see the next one from the one we were passing through we didn't see many people except for our fellow walkers.

during the last week we were a little kinder to ourselves than we had been up until that point in that we had a pack taxied twice and we took double rooms when we could. we also stayed in some very nice pilgrim hostels where, although we were still in rooms with other people they were designed more thoughtfully than others so we felt very rested.

despite the fact that our walking was drawing near to an end and we might have hoped to be getting into our stride with the walking we still found ourselves almost always the last to leave the hostels, the last to arrive in the afternoon (sometimes early evening) and still frequenting the farmacias to keep up our supplies of anti-inflamatories and bandages. juan's shin and ankle flared up awfully in the last week

along with the weariness there was an additional sense of poignancy to the last week when we started to say goodbye to some people who we had come to know a little as we had walked together. it's strange to feel loss when you say goodbye to someone whose name you don't even know but that's how it felt.

so there you have it. the last week was a blur of weariness, injury, sadness and farewell accompanied by the mounting anticipation of completing one of the world's great journeys. some on the camino have talked about the addictiveness of the camino. they are already planning to return.

it's a once in a lifetime event for me. it's been a great adventure. a time when i've had to accept the dominance of the landscape. i've absorbed the impact of the human story on the landscape and on culture and i've been a stranger in a culture for the first time in my life.

i also learnt, yet again, that there are very few things i can do on my own or even want to do on my own. thank you john for all the help, for all the way-finding, for all the care, for all the encouragement, for all the lifting and tending that you gave me during our long walk together.

thank you also for all the ridiculous moments, for never giving up on your non-mastery of spanish, for always being confident that there would be just what we needed in the next village. in some of the really dire hostels we really were the only 2 laughing and that's a great thing after nearly 32 years. thank you