More Camino training …

On Sunday, I set out on another training walk for our trek across Northern Spain on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela.  It looked pretty gloomy as I set off but I had not foreseen the downpour that began about half an hour in.   Worst weather for months.   Still, I thought ‘this will be a good test of my kit’.   Hmmm.   New shoes (from Mountain Warehouse – still time to vote for us!) held out very well, until about mile 6 and a field of very long, wet grass.  Socks ditto.  New trousers were sodden (not waterproof and selected more for their mosquito-proof-ness so understandable). Jacket too (a sailing coat – huh? Surely that must be watertight??). Rucksack dripping wet (map wrecked – grrr!).

I discovered I had been walking in the remnants of Hurricane Bertha.   “A month’s worth of rain in just a few hours” said the BBC website.  Ah-ha. However, as I am firmly of the belief that skin was made waterproof for a reason, I carried on walking.   At mile 7, the lightening started and suddenly the idea of a stretch of track over a fairly exposed hill just lost its appeal somehow. I called for reinforcements.

But ‘every cloud’ and all that.   I was much buoyed to discover the below sign on arrival at the church in Avington, where I sheltered from the rain to read the map.

An actual coquille St Jacques shell (the motif that represents the Camino)!!! This truly lifted my heart – AND the sign reminded me of my hike along the Pilgrims Way some 20 years before.  Camino pilgrims have these shells dangling from back packs and am now trying to work out how I can get some to take with me along the Way.

I have been reading a little about the history of pilgrimage to Santiago.   I love the romance of it all which has you asking ‘could James the Apostle really be buried there’, even when this seems so unlikely. Nevertheless, whether a discovery or an invention, Santiago has been a place of pilgrimage since the 9^th Century and it is an honour to be continuing that tradition.

When the lightening began, I took shelter in another church, in Itchen Stoke. I had forgotten what a lovely place this was, now looked after by the wonderful Churches Conservation Trust. Even though it was by now bucketing down, I set off around the churchyard looking for a particular grave, which I eventually found. To my chagrin, the inscription is now rather difficult to read but it marks the resting place of my great grandparents, who were farmers in nearby Abbotstone, and a fabulous great aunt who I remember so vividly from my childhood.

Chatting over Sunday lunch later with my mother, we concocted a plan to have the headstone re-engraved so that this piece of history is not lost.  If only we could save the stories as well.   (Note to self to persuade my mother to tell me all she can remember, and this time to record her reminiscences …)

Waiting in the church porch for the rescue team, I got to thinking about the shelter churches provide – in so many ways. Beautiful and useful, whatever you believe.  (Slightly concerned about what happened to whoever these boots belonged to – found abandoned, just like that, by the side of the track … !)

The whole family came to collect me, wet and cold yet heart-warmed, and I spent the rest of the morning cuddled up with the children reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.   And, just in case the rain in Spain doesn’t stay on the plain, I ordered some more waterproof walking kit from the Mountain Warehouse website the following day!   Find out more about the walk here.

And after the rain … (view from our garden over the water meadows)