Crossing la meseta

27.09-03.10.2013

A pilgrimage is also pain, including but not limited to physical suffering, effort and fighting. I was reminded of that when in Burgos one of my friends from Lithuania had to take two days of rest because of an injury. She was not, by any means, the only person that felt the consequences of walking every day for hours. My turn was only coming and it is going to catch up with me in the next journal entry. ;) Some of the people I have met or heard about had to make hard decisions to fly back to their countries or cities before reaching what they were hoping to reach. In fact, when on the Camino de Santiago you walk next to a grave of a pilgrim on several occasions, especially, during the first part. The majority of them died due to the physical effort they have undertaken. Few have been killed in car accidents. I am not saying that here to discourage anyone from going on a pilgrimage. I could not be further from that. I am simply stating that it is not easy. It is good to bear this in mind when you are about to travel into the unknown. This also makes the experience so much more real. Anyway, when you leave Burgos you enter what the Spanish call la meseta. It is a vast plateau in the heart of peninsular Spain through which you walk for several days crossing corn fields, corn fields and more corn fields. Some people complain that the landscape is simply speaking boring and does not stand a chance in comparison with Navarra, La Rioja or Galicia. Although it is very different from what you see in those regions, I disagree with the conclusion. It has its own beauty. And mystery. When you are there and you can see what is waiting for you during the next few kilometres, in this moment, without any warning, there might be a small valley in which there will be a town. They were invisible just minutes ago because they are located some 20-50 metres below the level of la meseta. You would not expect them to be there, yet the next moment you walk right through them.

The small villages. They are another element of a pilgrimage. In contrast to a tourist trip where you mostly drive next to them on a highway, here you visit them, you stay there to have lunch, you rest there, you sleep there. As I did whether it was Hontanas, Boadilla del Camino, Terradillos de los Templarios, Calzadilla de los Hermanillos or many others. While there, in the evening, you can sit in front of an albergue and watch the peaceful life of a village. Something that would brightly stand out if you thought about life in London, Madrid, Warszawa or some other big modern city. The value of a pilgrimage in this respect is that otherwise it would have been very difficulty to see a small pueblo (Spanish for a village) from inside. And the tranquillity and peacefulness you experience are worth walking even 30 km a day. If I have not mentioned that already, in the Pyrenees and on the Camino de Santiago there is something like a daily pattern. The usual day, if you will. Of course, there are exceptions and variations, but if one asked about the typical activities, it would be something like this. You wake up early in the morning, some go as early as 5 am, my usual time was between 5.45am and 6.30am. Then you take care of the morning duties, eat your breakfast, pack and go. Depending on the day, walking would take anything from 3-4 hours to 10 hours. The earliest I arrived in an albergue was 11am, the latest 7.30pm. When you finally get there, it is first shower, unpacking a little bit, washing your clothes, then relax, recovery, some visiting of the city/town you are staying in if you feel like it, a dinner most often together with wine (especially on the Camino de Santiago), talking, laughing, more visiting and then sleeping before the efforts of the next day. Most pilgrims go to bed around 10pm, in my case, several / many times I went to bed later but sometimes I was asleep at 10 pm too. This would be a typical or stereotypical day of a pilgrimage.

I have mentioned la meseta above. If you wanted to describe my pilgrimage in more detail in terms of geography, there are several different broad categories. La meseta, with its flat surface and corn fields would be one of them. Another would be the mountains, whether it were the Pyrenees near Gavarnie, the Pyreness which I was crossing after leaving Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port or the mountains of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The third category would be the cities with their busy streets and crowds of people, such as Lourdes, Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos, León or Santiago de Compostela to name the biggest ones. The final one would be the areas with a significant number of hills and small valleys with rivers where you often climb first and then descend only to be soon climbing up again. The view you see in those places is often hard to describe appropriately with words. Roncesvalles to Burgos, León to Astorga and Triacastela to Santiago de Compostela – this is where the fourth geographical type can be found. What differentiates la meseta from the other areas are the long stretches of solitary walks where you can see nothing but trees, fields and nature for, for example, 22 km as is the case between Calzadilla de los Hermanillos and Mansilla de las Mulas. There used to be more of those on the Camino de Santiago, but the development of infrastructure limited their number. Nevertheless, you will still sometimes find yourself walking and walking, and walking for hours at the time without a town or a city. In this way, mixing solitary hikes, corn fields and small villages, I arrived in León.

Photo: La Rioja, the Camino de Santiago