After a great nights sleep in hotel El Cid dreaming of great knightly quests I set of for Segovia some 200 miles away. At this juncture I left following the Camino’s traditional route which would have taken me westwards to Leon but I was keen to visit Segovia for its impressive cathedral, castle and roman viaduct. Then the following day to visit Avila the birth place and home of St Theresa of Avila one of the west’s greatest Christian mystics and on to Salamanca which is Oxbridge in Spanish terms their premier university.As I pulled the car out of the cool of the underground car park and felt the blast of heat as I entered the sunlight I knew I was going to be in for another very hot day. I put lots of sun cream and made sure I had plenty of water then set off for another day’s adventure.
I now feel very nomadic and the call of the road is an odd thing and generates a mixture of feelings which can sometimes be overwhelming. At one level you just want to get to your destination in my case Santiago and the Shrine of St James' then you feel you would just prefer to be back home and can feel extremely homesick. However then another feeling comes in which is that you never really want the journey to end, that you would be happy to spend day after day travelling as if some unseen force is constantly calling you on. I know that all of the books I read by seasoned travellers before leaving on this adventure spoke of these feelings. It seems to take several weeks before this begins to happen. The first couple of weeks can seem just like an average fortnight’s holiday but once into the third week this disappears and you are no longer a tourist but a traveller or true pilgrim. I have met several pilgrims who have been walking for over 6 weeks now who have homes and families but they too echo this new existence. Maybe this is what Jesus was referring to when he said that foxes have their holes and birds there nest but the son of man has no where to lay his head. As I sped along the very dry long straight roads of the Spanish plains I had plenty of time to contemplate all of these new feelings.
My first stop was St Domingo de Silos where there is a huge monastery which was rebuilt be St Dominic in 1041AD over the sight of a previous abbey which was destroyed by the moors. Here I picked up another Camino which comes via Barcelona. The setting is very rural and it’s quiet and tranquillity has been an inspiration to many artists. The monastery is still in use today so access is limited but I was able to see the magnificent cloisters and the pharmacy which has been recreated as it was in the middle ages. Sadly they were very strict about photography so I was only able to take pictures of the outside of the building and as I had arrived at ten to one just managed to get inside but not able to by a postcards of the interior as they shut the gift shop for lunch and it would not reopen until 4pm.
By now the temperature was 32 degrees Celsius. I knew this as one of the very small shops in the town had a sign which flashed the time and temperature alternately. I found a very old looking hotel and headed inside. It was blissfully cool not due to air-conditioning but the 4ft think walls and small windows. Ironically in the foyer there where pictures of the little village deep in snow and ice showing the great fluctuation in temperature in this part of Spain. The hotel was empty apart from one other elderly couple taking refuge from the heat and a few flies buzzing around, the noise of there tiny wings adding to the atmosphere of the place rather than being an annoyance. A lady dress as a Spanish maid [nothing like a French maid more like a nun sadly] was in the café bar and I asked her to make me a tortilla and mixed salad. Tortilla is basically chunks of fried potato with onion and then egg sometimes referred to as Spanish Omelette. This is very much childhood food to me as my mother being Spanish would make this regularly and still does when she comes to look after the boys on Wednesdays.
I would have liked to have stayed in the cool of the hotel with the flies until 5pm when it would have cooled but I had a long way to go and had to brave the heat. I pressed on to Valladolid but by the time I got there it was so hot I didn’t feel like walking around. I managed to fuel the car and find a small bar to have a long cool drink of orange and lemonade. The car had attracted some attention the barman very please I had parked it outside of his establishment. Unfortunately I had to shout at three young lads who where taking pictures of themselves with the car. This was fine until the third and largest of the three decided he was going to sit on the very fragile fibreglass wheel arch. They seemed surprised and I explained but the bar man came out and told them to clear off and was very apologetic for the local youth.
I had intended a planned stop at Coca which has another ancient monastery but I was running late and the heat was too intense to consider a detour so I pointed my horse for Segovia. It was to some relief that I began to descend from the hot plane into a deep valley with trees and shade bringing a welcome drop in the temperature. It was not long before I set eyes on the fairy tail turrets of the Alcazar Segovia’s castle a welcomed site for any knight on a quest. In fact it impressed Walt Disney so much when he visited the place that when he came to build Disney Land he said he wanted the castle to look like the Alcazar in Segovia.
I have not had a lot of luck with my intention of camping through a mixture of heat, tiredness and late arrival and tonight was going to be no different. I headed to the campsite just outside the city but when I arrived had second thoughts as it resembled a traveller’s camp rather than a campsite and my little car was already attracting too much attention. I was concerned that I might wake from my tent in the morning to find it stripped so decided it was going to have to be another hotel.
I punched up a list of hotels on the sat nav and headed for the nearest one with parking. Now here’s a travellers tip for you. If like me your moving from hotel to hotel and don’t have a reservation take a mini PC note book that will let you connect to the web. I parked up and went into reception to ask the price of a room with parking this was a three star hotel Holiday Inn in fashion nothing particularly spectacular. The girl at reception asked if I had a reservation to which my reply was no. The total cost for my stay was 85 Euros nearly £80 a lot for one night. I asked if they had free Wi-Fi which they did. I then went out of the hotel sat on a bench and logged on to the internet and did a search for the hotel. Several sites came up with offers a few minutes later I had reserved myself a room with parking and breakfast at the same hotel for 46 Euros half the price about £38 much more like it. The girl was somewhat surprised when I walked in and then said I had a reservation. She said no and I asked her to look and watch her eyebrows rise as she found my booking. 46 Euros I said waving my little note book. She said that she didn’t think this was allowed and phoned the manager who said if I had a booking on the hotel computer with a credit card for that price then it was valid! I rewarded my ingenuity with a shower and cold beer before heading of into town.
It was a Tuesday night but there seemed to be a lot more people out than I would have expected more like a Friday or Saturday and they were all dressed up in their best. Elegant old ladies like Spanish galleons floating up and down the wide open vistas of the town centre.
I found a cheap and cheerful restaurant which de Platos Combainons which means combination plates and tucked into chicken fillets, fries and a small salad with a house wine all for 9 Euros oh and as much bread as you can eat, very good value. I decided to give the hotel restaurant a miss as I had no reservation!!! Seated next to me were an English couple who live in Andalusia for 6 months of the year returning to the UK in the summer they where heading for Santander and the ferry but love Segovia so much they always stop on the way up.
At this point I discovered there was about to be a fiesta which was why their where so many folk around for today was the feast day of John the Baptist. I haven’t really been looking a diaries but a quick glance at my iPod confirmed that this was the case. It was only 9pm so things wouldn’t liven up for another hour or so. After a pleasant meal and conversation with my expat neighbours I headed up to the Cathedral in the old part of town. Sure enough a large stage had been erected outside the Cathedral and a huge bonfire built. The tradition in Spain today is that bonfires are lit all over the county it is also midsummer’s eve so a hit of the pagan mixed with the Christian. At 10:30pm dry ice started to waft from behind the curtain on the stage and various lighting effects began to a cacophony of music as the curtain slowly rose. Three singers a girl and two guys with a large band then jumped into a compilation of Spanish favourites and in no time at all the square outside the cathedral was heaving and everybody dancing young and old many families with young children too it was all very friendly and you felt completely safe.
I can’t imagine this happening in Swindon my experience has been that the fighting has normally broken out at this point as people stagger senseless out of the bars. In Spain and France so far despite being out late and bars open every night to gone two I have not seen one drunk or experienced one act of aggression we have a lot to learn from our European cousins about how to have a good time.
The dancing went on until the small hours and for the most part I enjoyed the atmosphere enormously but it’s the first time I have really experienced how lonely you can feel in a large crowed. I’ve spent hours on my own over the past weeks and never had this intense feeling. But with everyone around you dancing with their friends, wives or lovers you do feel very lonely and I wished that my beloved Kate was here with me to dance the night away. To take my mind of this I decided to capture as much of the event on my camera as possible and then turned in a 1:30am but the party continued till 4am.
I have never experienced a whole town let alone a whole nation sharing a collective hangover! I was up at 8:30am and out of the hotel and looking for a café for breakfast but many where still shut and the streets very quiet. By 9:30am more people had ventured onto the streets and were heading for work. You need to remember that this was no bank holiday everyone worked yesterday and would do today but I think the boss would be sympathetic too the situation as he or she would as likely be nursing a sore head to. I watched with some amusement drinking my coffee feeling rather bright eyed after a good nights' sleep as weary Spaniards passed by often looking a little dishevelled.
I had a couple of horse to walk round the town visit the cathedral which is the last great Gothic Cathedral in Spain dating from 1525 built to replace an older building. It is huge and you strain your neck trying to look up at the high towers and vaulted ceilings. While there I joined a mass said in Polish. I then headed up to the Alcazar castle which I have visited before several times but it was good to walk around the new military museum and armoury as well as taking in the magnificent views over the battlements. It was not long before that feeling returned of being driven on and I new I was time to head back to the hotel check out and Head for Avila as well as some old childhood haunts.
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