Part 14: Santo Domingo de la Calzada - Belorado (23 kilometres); or how I met Fiona, the Irish lady...

After leaving the hostel in Nájera where we stayed this weekend, Miguelo and I set off for Belorado where we finished today’s route. We parked the car in front of the Church of Santa María la Mayor, and went off in search of accommodation for tonight. All of the private hostels and guesthouses were full so we had to go right to the edge of Belorado to find a room in a little hotel called Jacobeo. It’s small but very well equipped and is more than reasonably priced.

The owner, who seemed a little stressed, was on the reception. On the one hand he was trying to deal with a German guy, in atrocious English, who didn’t agree with the amount on his bill and on the other he was on the phone with some pilgrims who he was having a hard time communicating with because they seemingly didn’t speak any Spanish. He got himself into such a pickle that he told the ones on the phone: “and who’s going to pay the VAT, my mother?” and to the German he had in front of him, who didn’t want to pay the VAT, he said “wait a moment; I don’t understand a thing here”. Despite the fact that I offered to try and verify what the ones on the other end of the line were saying, the owner passed the phone to his wife, who apparently speaks English. In perfect Spanish, without having to say a word in another language, she reserved a double room for them for that same evening. When she hung up, I told his wife that her English is much better than mine and we both laughed at the expense of her husband, who snapped angrily that the bastards hadn’t said a word to him in Spanish.

After leaving my things in the room, the receptionist’s wife drove us to Santo Domingo de la Calzada where we started our twenty-three kilometre route. It was around midday when we started our journey. We didn’t bump into many pilgrims as we started so late. The majority of those doing the Camino at the moment are foreigners, many of them uncivilised folk, as their strange customs show: they get up at six in the morning, if not before, to start walking and are sleeping, or sleeping it off in some cases, by nine at night. I really don’t understand them. I prefer to get up at eight, have breakfast at my own pace then start my walk after, stopping to chat with the people I meet along the way. If I arrive at my destination at six or seven in the evening then great, it’s still bright until after nine pm and the temperature is very bearable. Anyway, each to their own…

Today’s route has been the dullest to date, who am I kidding. The majority of the Camino runs parallel to a busy main road crammed with lorries. It’s a good job Miguelo was there to give me some animated conversation. At around seven kilometres from Santo Domingo de la Calzada we stopped off for lunch in Grañón, the last town in La Rioja. In one of the bars in the town we were served one of the best slices of juicy Spanish omelette I’ve ever had. It was so good that, before heading back out again, we asked for a couple of baguettes to take away. As you leave Grañón there is a lookout point from which you can see the plateau of Castile, as a couple of old people who were passing the morning there pointed out.

After crossing into the province of Burgos, we stopped off again in Viloria de Rioja, around eight kilometres away, to gobble our Spanish omelette baguettes. There was a dog sniffing around the picnic area where we were so we gave him a bit of bread. We felt really bad but the Spanish omelette was too good to give to the poor animal. The Camino path to this town was more pleasant because it veers off about two kilometres from the main road, which allows the walker to forget about the lorries for a while.

We arrived in Belorado around half four in the afternoon. The very calm owner was on reception and seemed surprised to see us again so soon. The truth is, despite having stopped for half an hour here and there, we did the route in no time at all. It was all flat ground and there weren’t a lot of places to stop so we wanted to finish as soon as possible.

After showering, we went into the town and sat and had a beer in the Plaza Mayor. I thought I could see Eva, the Californian girl, and I also thought she was pretending not to see me. She's young – I said to myself as I went over to say hello. After acting all surprised and saying that she didn’t realise I was there, a classic, she told me that her limp is much better after two days of rest and that she’s going to start walking again tomorrow. I told her to say hello to her father for me, who I imagine had enjoyed the last couple of days without having to worry about where his daughter was, and I said goodbye to her knowing that at some point tomorrow I would bump into her again, likely exhausted on a steep slope.

After the beer, Miguelo and I moved on to a small bar on one of the side streets near the plaza and had a mixed salad and a few kebab skewers that were really tasty. I said goodbye to Miguelo after dinner as he had a long way to go to get back to Pamplona, by car of course, and I thanked him for everything he had done for me during the first two weeks of my pilgrimage. Later, after I went up to the room to get my note pad, I went down to the hotel bar to have a glass of Ribera del Duero and write for a while. I was served by a very nice Dutch barmaid who I chatted with for a few minutes. While I was writing, I thought I recognised a group of Germans that I met at the wine fountain in Iratxe, the ones I made do the can-can while I filmed them. I don’t know if it was due to the effects of the wine, the sun, or a combination of both, but the Teutons looked like an army of glow worms. I was tempted to tell the Dutch barmaid to turn off the lights to save on energy because we had enough just with the amount that they were radiating from their red faces.

After a while I quickly, and very politely, got up to make sure a woman, who was staggering towards the exit of the bar, didn’t bump into anything and to open the door for her. The woman, who really reminded me of Tamara, the media personality and daughter of Margarita six-fingers, due to her appearance, thanked me in English and excused herself saying that she was going outside to smoke a cigarette. I was a bit surprised that she had to go outside to smoke as what she had in one hand was one of these new electronic cigarettes for quitting that only emits water vapour, and in the other was a glass of white wine. Not even five minutes later, the Irish woman, Fiona, as she told me she was called, came back inside and sat down at the table I was at without asking permission. She didn’t really need to ask anyway to be honest as my table is permanently open for characters likely to appear in these stories and I had already sensed, without knowing her, that at the end of my trip Fiona would occupy a place of honour in my journal.

After introducing ourselves, Fiona asked me if I was a fellow countryman of hers. This really is nothing new to me and used to happen to me a lot when I lived in London. A lot of people thought I was Irish or Scottish… until I opened my mouth and my accent gave me away, of course. If I didn’t look like my siblings as much as I do, I would have sat my parents down a long time ago and told them that I’m old enough to know the truth.

Fiona was telling me that she has decided to stay in this hotel because she’s sick to the back teeth of pilgrim hostels. She thinks the whole Camino de Santiago thing is great but there is no reason in the world, as good as it may be, to justify her having to sleep surrounded by guys who snore and smell awful. She told me how horrified she was at a French guy who was sleeping in the bunk bed beside her last night, who literally smelt of shit and who was letting off left, right and centre all night long. Despite the fact I didn’t ask for the details, Fiona didn’t hold back in recreating the scene which was starting to make me feel a bit ropey.

Fiona’s unilateral decision not to go back to a pilgrim hostel caused an argument with her pilgrimage companion who sees sleeping with other pilgrims as part of the experience and that sleeping in a private room with all its comforts would take away from it. Just to piss her off even more, Fiona’s companion has decided to stop boozing until she arrives in Santiago in an attempt to give the Camino a more ascetic feel, which has ended up creating distance between the two Irish women: "She drinks two bottles of wine every night in Ireland but the stupid woman had to come here to decide she wasn’t going to have a drop. What do you think of that?” – Fiona asked me as she took another sip from her glass. I, of course, replied that it was very bad and that it’s just not something you do to a friend.

The conversation went on and Fiona told me that she is here because her father died a few months ago and so when her friend suggested she come along she thought it would be a good way of clearing her head and trying to put some order back into her life. Given the amount of wine she has consumed, I don’t get the impression that she is making much progress with this goal, but anyway, no need to be too worried I thought as there’s still quite a few days left until we reach Santiago. Fiona told me that she got married young and had two children but soon her marriage broke down and she had to bring up her children herself. She is a social worker who deals with problematic teenagers in detention centres in the Irish town where she lives. 

Fiona told me she was very close to her father. After downing the contents of her glass in one gulp, holding back tears as she looked at me in the eyes, she said: “he taught me how to ride a horse, shoot a gun, kick a ball, do you know what that means? Do you?” I was speechless to tell you the truth. The first thing that came to my mind is that her father asked for a hooker for the Irish national rugby team and that the stork got a bit confused with the order and left her instead, but of course I wasn’t going to tell her that, so I chose to keep my mouth shut. After a few seconds of tense silence, holding each other’s gaze, Fiona blurted out “let me buy you a drink”, which made my hair stand on end.

I told Fiona that in our country it’s the gentleman who buys the lady a drink and just then she straightened herself up like a peacock, which is when I realised that my over-politeness may have been misinterpreted. I went up to the bar and asked the Dutch barmaid for two glasses of wine, one white and the other red. When she saw who I was sitting with, she told me she didn’t think it was a good idea as she’d already served her eight glasses before and that even when she served her the first there were already signs of drunkenness. Just in case I was in any doubt, she emphasized her point by telling me that about an hour ago she had to clean up a clover-shaped pool of sick at the door. I had to admit the Dutch barmaid was right and so I told her not to worry, I would tell the Irish woman that they were closing up and had finished serving.  

As I returned to the table, I was scared stiff to see that Fiona, in my absence, was defining her lips using an intense red lip liner. When I say defining, what I really mean is that she reminded me of my little sister when she, in a moment of distraction, got hold of my mother’s make up and smeared it all over her face. I thought it was a good time to call it a night as I felt things were going a bit too far and so I told Fiona that the bar was closing and they weren’t serving any more. With the look of someone who is really sick and tired of having to deal with immature guys who don’t know how to treat a real woman, she coldly retorted: “don’t worry, go and get some rest, you need it”. I nervously hop-footed it up to my room and made sure I put the latch on. A little while later I heard some footsteps and the sound of a key trying to open a lock. The noise went on for a few minutes during which I pulled the covers further and further up, like I was the main character in a horror film, afraid that the door Fiona was trying to open was mine. In the end she managed to get into her room and a few moments later I heard a tremendous thud. I think someone was playing one of those nasty tricks and moved Fiona’s bed just as she was about to get in it…