Turga
Camino tortuga
- Time of past OR future Camino
. . . . . . . . .
It’s not easy, but you can get lost on the Camino. It happened to me this year and maybe it happened to others as well. I guess it’s a case of bad decisions and stubbornness, but, anyway, here is my story of being lost on the Camino:
On the stage from Fromista to Carriòn de los Condes, you can take the Villovieco variant by turning right in Poblaciòn de Campos and so avoid walking along the main road for the remaining 15 kilometers or so. It’s a much nicer walk starting through flat fields and continuing on a nice path along the small Ucieza river –and only a few kilometers longer than the alternative.
At some point, I think after around 5 km, you cross a small, paved road where yellow arrows point to the left. Straight as I am, I followed the arrows only to discover that they were leading to some albergue and eventually back to the main road. So I turned back and resumed the path along the river. There were occasional Camino markers along the path, so though I was alone, I felt at ease.
After having walked for around another hour, I came to another small road perpendicular to the path with yellow arrows pointing to the left. But on the other side of the road, where the path seemed to continue, there was a signpost with information on the Camino, and I thought ‘Oh no, you won’t fool me again with those yellow arrows’ and I continued on the path along the small river.
The path got increasingly narrow until eventually it wasn’t really a path but only two faint wheel tracks with dry grass on them indicating, that they hadn’t been used for some time. This might have been a good time for the clear headed to turn back –but I didn’t. I had the (very hot) sun in my back and I was thinking something like ‘apparently not many have walked here, but I am generally walking in the right direction and if it gets a bit rough, I can handle it’.
So I kept walking for another 20 minutes or so, and then the tracks simply stopped. There was still a faint indication of a track, where the tall, dry grass seemed to have been bent down in the forward direction. This would have been another good point to decide to turn back, but I didn’t. Soon after, I found myself fighting my way through a wilderness of bushes and waist-high thistles and nettles, but somehow in my mind I had now gone beyond ‘the point of no return’ –no way was I going to walk back 5-6 kilometers through this terrain to pick up the yellow arrows.
So I bulldozed on and my right shin started to hurt quite badly (I had been treated some days before in Burgos for a bad case of Tendonitis), the sun was getting really hot, there was not a wind, I was low on water and around a zillion aggressive flies had decided, that the only aspiration in their lives was to sit on my face.
Shortly after came the point where after all maybe I had to turn back: A two-meter deep ditch with steep banks blocked the path and extended into the horizon on the left. The bottom was covered with weeds, so I couldn’t see how deep the water was. But I was getting stubborn (and perhaps a little desperate) so I slid down the side and into the water, which luckily was only ankle-deep. It was quite a hassle getting up on the other side with backpack, bum-bag and walking pole and I was wet and muddy and drenched in sweat.
The tree line along the river now took a turn to the right and two sights appeared: Across the fields in the distance, I could see the roofs of some houses and right in front of me an old, battered sign on a rotting wooden pole saying “Coto privado”. My first thought was why someone would put up a sign out here in the middle of nowhere, where apparently nobody had been for ages, and my second thought was “Coto privado” or not, I’m not going back. As it was, I don’t think that I could have gone back, that I could have crossed that ditch one more time. I was tired and dirty and thirsty and my right shin felt like it was on fire. At that point, my emergency plan was to cross over the fields directly towards the village, call a taxi and call it a day; but then I realized that I couldn’t do that. Because I was walking on higher ground relative to the fields on the left (and because I had plenty to do fighting through the vegetation) I had not noticed, that at some point the fields had changed from harvested crop fields into a vast field of semi-dead sunflowers. They were around two-and-a-half meters high, with stems as thick as my walking pole and there was no more than 15-20 centimeters between them. I wouldn’t have gotten far trying to walk through them and I guess it wouldn’t have been a popular thing to do – and I was already a trespasser.
So I just continued along the tree line by the river, there was not much else I could do. The tree line swung left and right, and the next time I had a view across the fields, the roofs of the small city had disappeared. These small cities on the Meseta have this way of suddenly appearing just to disappear again behind one of the low hills.
On I walked and I started to feel a bit dizzy and I have to admit, that the thought that I could just grab my phone and call for help crossed my mind. But no, you don’t do that.
Eventually I crashed through some thorny bushes and there, just in front of me, was a narrow, dusty dirt road. I never thought one could be so happy to see a narrow dirt road, but in my blurred mind was just the thought that a road, narrow and dusty or not, had to lead to somewhere. I sat down on a rock for a moment and tried to lick the last moisture out of my water bottle. I had lost all sense of direction and had no idea if I should turn left or right –there was nothing to see in either direction. Eventually I turned left for no reason in particular except that a sharp right turn would be against my general political attitude.
It was hot and it was dry and for every step, the powdery grey dust on the road whirled up and settled on my wet shoes and sweaty legs (I was walking in shorts), and the story of Lot’s wife came to mind.
The road was leading up a low hill and after just 15 minutes or so of walking, a church tower started to emerge slowly behind the hill and a few minutes later, there is was, a small pueblo –what a relief!
When, after another 20 minutes, I walked into the village, it was around 3 PM, high siesta-hour, and the streets were all deserted, there was not a sound, not a dog barking, not a cat lying in the shadow. It was actually a bit eerie walking through the streets in the heat and calmness and silence, with all the windows of the old houses blinded and all doors closed, while the inhabitants were probably taking an afternoon nap. I was so tired and so thirsty that I said to myself, that if I didn’t meet a living soul soon, I’d have to knock on some random door and ask for some water and if they’d call me a taxi.
I turned a corner, and there was a man in the street walking towards me. He was very well dressed in a shiny white shirt and tie, and somehow he looked a bit ‘out of context’ on the dusty street in this small, rural village. I asked him (in Spanish, I believe) if there was a bar or tienda or casa that was open, and after some attempts and some arm-flapping he finally got the message and made a random gesture up the street and around the corner.
I thanked him and proceeded as directed, and yes! I heard voices and yes! I saw a small group of people around some tables outside an old house. I wasn’t too aware of good manners at that point, so I just walked by and through the fly-curtain and into the bar room. There were 8-10 men standing at the bar, and for a brief moment, I felt like a stranger walking into a saloon in the Wild West: All conversation stopped and all faces turned towards me. And I must have been quite a sight: Drenched in sweat, covered in mud and dust, torn on arms and legs and probably looking a bit desperate. I dumped my backpack by the entrance, and staggered up to the bar.
Camino angels come in different shapes and disguises, and I met two that day. The first was the young woman behind the bar, who just looked at me and smiled, poured a big glass of cold water and pushed it across the bar towards me. It is remarkable how little it sometimes takes to recuperate. After that glass of water, and another one, I was no longer on the brink of falling flat on the floor and I asked the bar-woman where I was and told her how I got here and why I appeared the way I did. She quickly sensed that she had to speak slowly in order for me to understand, whereas the men were talking and asking questions so rapidly, that I didn’t understand much. The bar-woman relayed what I had told her to the men, which caused a lot of talking and smiles and laughter.
It turned out that I was in the small pueblo of San Mamès de Campos about 4-5 km’s off the Camino where people had hardly seen a pilgrim before. Then appeared the second Camino Angel in the shape of a tall youngish man. He said something to the bar-woman, which she slowly relayed to me (nobody spoke any English, of course). It turned out that he lived in Carriòn de los Condes and offered to give me a ride when he was going back in a short while. He was standing at the bar drinking some clear liquid out of a small, flat bottle which wasn’t very reassuring, but at the state I was in I would have gladly accepted if the devil himself had offered me a ride. All went well; he dropped me off in front of the monesterio Zan Zoilo, gave me a ‘high five’ and raced off in his old car.
I spent the next hour sitting in the late afternoon sunshine wiping mud and dirt off my shoes and legs and shorts and picking off hundreds of small hard burdocks, which seemed to be glued onto my socks and t-shirt. This was carried out in the company of a large glass of cold beer and it didn’t take long before I had convinced myself, that this had been a good day after all.
On the stage from Fromista to Carriòn de los Condes, you can take the Villovieco variant by turning right in Poblaciòn de Campos and so avoid walking along the main road for the remaining 15 kilometers or so. It’s a much nicer walk starting through flat fields and continuing on a nice path along the small Ucieza river –and only a few kilometers longer than the alternative.
At some point, I think after around 5 km, you cross a small, paved road where yellow arrows point to the left. Straight as I am, I followed the arrows only to discover that they were leading to some albergue and eventually back to the main road. So I turned back and resumed the path along the river. There were occasional Camino markers along the path, so though I was alone, I felt at ease.
After having walked for around another hour, I came to another small road perpendicular to the path with yellow arrows pointing to the left. But on the other side of the road, where the path seemed to continue, there was a signpost with information on the Camino, and I thought ‘Oh no, you won’t fool me again with those yellow arrows’ and I continued on the path along the small river.
The path got increasingly narrow until eventually it wasn’t really a path but only two faint wheel tracks with dry grass on them indicating, that they hadn’t been used for some time. This might have been a good time for the clear headed to turn back –but I didn’t. I had the (very hot) sun in my back and I was thinking something like ‘apparently not many have walked here, but I am generally walking in the right direction and if it gets a bit rough, I can handle it’.
So I kept walking for another 20 minutes or so, and then the tracks simply stopped. There was still a faint indication of a track, where the tall, dry grass seemed to have been bent down in the forward direction. This would have been another good point to decide to turn back, but I didn’t. Soon after, I found myself fighting my way through a wilderness of bushes and waist-high thistles and nettles, but somehow in my mind I had now gone beyond ‘the point of no return’ –no way was I going to walk back 5-6 kilometers through this terrain to pick up the yellow arrows.
So I bulldozed on and my right shin started to hurt quite badly (I had been treated some days before in Burgos for a bad case of Tendonitis), the sun was getting really hot, there was not a wind, I was low on water and around a zillion aggressive flies had decided, that the only aspiration in their lives was to sit on my face.
Shortly after came the point where after all maybe I had to turn back: A two-meter deep ditch with steep banks blocked the path and extended into the horizon on the left. The bottom was covered with weeds, so I couldn’t see how deep the water was. But I was getting stubborn (and perhaps a little desperate) so I slid down the side and into the water, which luckily was only ankle-deep. It was quite a hassle getting up on the other side with backpack, bum-bag and walking pole and I was wet and muddy and drenched in sweat.
The tree line along the river now took a turn to the right and two sights appeared: Across the fields in the distance, I could see the roofs of some houses and right in front of me an old, battered sign on a rotting wooden pole saying “Coto privado”. My first thought was why someone would put up a sign out here in the middle of nowhere, where apparently nobody had been for ages, and my second thought was “Coto privado” or not, I’m not going back. As it was, I don’t think that I could have gone back, that I could have crossed that ditch one more time. I was tired and dirty and thirsty and my right shin felt like it was on fire. At that point, my emergency plan was to cross over the fields directly towards the village, call a taxi and call it a day; but then I realized that I couldn’t do that. Because I was walking on higher ground relative to the fields on the left (and because I had plenty to do fighting through the vegetation) I had not noticed, that at some point the fields had changed from harvested crop fields into a vast field of semi-dead sunflowers. They were around two-and-a-half meters high, with stems as thick as my walking pole and there was no more than 15-20 centimeters between them. I wouldn’t have gotten far trying to walk through them and I guess it wouldn’t have been a popular thing to do – and I was already a trespasser.
So I just continued along the tree line by the river, there was not much else I could do. The tree line swung left and right, and the next time I had a view across the fields, the roofs of the small city had disappeared. These small cities on the Meseta have this way of suddenly appearing just to disappear again behind one of the low hills.
On I walked and I started to feel a bit dizzy and I have to admit, that the thought that I could just grab my phone and call for help crossed my mind. But no, you don’t do that.
Eventually I crashed through some thorny bushes and there, just in front of me, was a narrow, dusty dirt road. I never thought one could be so happy to see a narrow dirt road, but in my blurred mind was just the thought that a road, narrow and dusty or not, had to lead to somewhere. I sat down on a rock for a moment and tried to lick the last moisture out of my water bottle. I had lost all sense of direction and had no idea if I should turn left or right –there was nothing to see in either direction. Eventually I turned left for no reason in particular except that a sharp right turn would be against my general political attitude.
It was hot and it was dry and for every step, the powdery grey dust on the road whirled up and settled on my wet shoes and sweaty legs (I was walking in shorts), and the story of Lot’s wife came to mind.
The road was leading up a low hill and after just 15 minutes or so of walking, a church tower started to emerge slowly behind the hill and a few minutes later, there is was, a small pueblo –what a relief!
When, after another 20 minutes, I walked into the village, it was around 3 PM, high siesta-hour, and the streets were all deserted, there was not a sound, not a dog barking, not a cat lying in the shadow. It was actually a bit eerie walking through the streets in the heat and calmness and silence, with all the windows of the old houses blinded and all doors closed, while the inhabitants were probably taking an afternoon nap. I was so tired and so thirsty that I said to myself, that if I didn’t meet a living soul soon, I’d have to knock on some random door and ask for some water and if they’d call me a taxi.
I turned a corner, and there was a man in the street walking towards me. He was very well dressed in a shiny white shirt and tie, and somehow he looked a bit ‘out of context’ on the dusty street in this small, rural village. I asked him (in Spanish, I believe) if there was a bar or tienda or casa that was open, and after some attempts and some arm-flapping he finally got the message and made a random gesture up the street and around the corner.
I thanked him and proceeded as directed, and yes! I heard voices and yes! I saw a small group of people around some tables outside an old house. I wasn’t too aware of good manners at that point, so I just walked by and through the fly-curtain and into the bar room. There were 8-10 men standing at the bar, and for a brief moment, I felt like a stranger walking into a saloon in the Wild West: All conversation stopped and all faces turned towards me. And I must have been quite a sight: Drenched in sweat, covered in mud and dust, torn on arms and legs and probably looking a bit desperate. I dumped my backpack by the entrance, and staggered up to the bar.
Camino angels come in different shapes and disguises, and I met two that day. The first was the young woman behind the bar, who just looked at me and smiled, poured a big glass of cold water and pushed it across the bar towards me. It is remarkable how little it sometimes takes to recuperate. After that glass of water, and another one, I was no longer on the brink of falling flat on the floor and I asked the bar-woman where I was and told her how I got here and why I appeared the way I did. She quickly sensed that she had to speak slowly in order for me to understand, whereas the men were talking and asking questions so rapidly, that I didn’t understand much. The bar-woman relayed what I had told her to the men, which caused a lot of talking and smiles and laughter.
It turned out that I was in the small pueblo of San Mamès de Campos about 4-5 km’s off the Camino where people had hardly seen a pilgrim before. Then appeared the second Camino Angel in the shape of a tall youngish man. He said something to the bar-woman, which she slowly relayed to me (nobody spoke any English, of course). It turned out that he lived in Carriòn de los Condes and offered to give me a ride when he was going back in a short while. He was standing at the bar drinking some clear liquid out of a small, flat bottle which wasn’t very reassuring, but at the state I was in I would have gladly accepted if the devil himself had offered me a ride. All went well; he dropped me off in front of the monesterio Zan Zoilo, gave me a ‘high five’ and raced off in his old car.
I spent the next hour sitting in the late afternoon sunshine wiping mud and dirt off my shoes and legs and shorts and picking off hundreds of small hard burdocks, which seemed to be glued onto my socks and t-shirt. This was carried out in the company of a large glass of cold beer and it didn’t take long before I had convinced myself, that this had been a good day after all.
glad you met some Camino angels.
I actually think it’s a bit funny 
