saturday...the ?17th

i dont remember much about this walk except that we got to estrella and got the neighbors mad and calling the cops because grainne was barking. but she just wanted to be inside. she is such a pain cuz she has NO patience for not getting what she wants. even now, every time i tie her outside to go in a shop she barks CONSTANTLY. shes like a bad, evil teenage girl. anyway, we were so glad to be allowed to be inside this night , and there were just 2 other spanish guys staying there. after i got in trouble for her barking with the guy in charge he asked if she came in would she be silencio. i said yeah yeah of course. thats all she wanted. i dragged her into bed and kept an arm on her all night so she wouldnt cause anyh more trouble. she was snoring though.... :p lol the next morning we wanted to go to mass but i didtn think they would let me in with a dog so we didnt get to go. we PLANNED to camp this next night in lorca becasue the albergues there were closed and after lorca there was a stretch of 12 k or something with no villages. i knew we couldnt do the 20 k so we just planned to do the 7. when we got to lorca i asked the priest as mass was coming out could we put our tent there. he said yeah, but its gonna be cold. again, wish i had pics. we chilled for the afternoon, the sun was kind of warm, and i let my clothes dry. the priest had told me there was a bar if i wanted something to eat... and i meant to go up there and get water before it closed at 3 but when i went up at 245 it looked closing up so i didnt bother. i should have. the next morning as i was brushing my teeth at the public fountain this guy came out of the bar saying to me "peregrino?" i.e. pilgrim in spanish. i said yeah, no hablo espanol. and he started speaking english. he said we could have stayed there the night befofe. ok i was hoping to finish this but this little kid whos parents own the bar im in just asked me in spanish to use the comptuer soi i gotta go. who can resist a 3 year old little kid?

Friday the 16th....albergue closed, camp in churchyard

this was our second day. we were trying to get to estrella....i thought we must be almost there when i saw a sign that said estrella:15k. this was at like 2 in the afternoon. we had been hiking or like 5 hours...all through mud and clay and hilly terrain..and apparently had only gone 5k..i knew at this point that there was NO WAY we could make it to the next place there was an albergue and that we would have to camp. we kept going but finally i knew we werent going any further than the next village or so... i thought probably we could just ask to sleep in a church or something. no such luck. we got to whatever this village was i forget, and the albergue said closed except to groups. an old man indicated to me to ring the bell across the street since they were the ones who ran it but they didnt answer. so i thought maybe i could sleep in the church. i had been figuring hey, im a pilgrim right, so they should let me sleep in churches, right ? i somehow communicated to a guy washing his motorcycle at the public fountain that was there anywhere for me to put my tent and/or was there a priest i could ask if i could sleep in the church. he said there was no priest in the village but that noone would really care if i put my tent there. darn. i wish i could upload my pictures... anyway i managed to peg the tent in the mostly-stone courtyard, since the mortar was crumbling enuff that i could peg it into the stonewalls and benches. lol. and jury-rig it. gro was not real thrilled with the tent because it is so so tiny she cant stand up in it. also, there was no shop in this village so we had very little food. i had a little of her dogfood left...which she had to eat out of my shoe for lack of a bowl. lol. anyway, I felt pretty safe in the chruchyard in this little village and my tent was hidden by the stonewall anyway. i heard someone go into teh church and banged on the door to ask if i could stay in it but they didnt answer. later, a nun came out and i asked her was my tent ok there. she indicated it was fine. but really i was hoping she woudl feel bad for me and offer me somewhere better to stay. but no luck. we crawled in for a long night. the tent isnt really big enuff for me and gro and my stuff... she cant stand up in teh bottom end of it and i cant sit up in it even in the top end of it. but it only weighs less than a kilo. but jeez they could have made it a foot by a foot bigger so you could at least sit up in it. anyway, we went "to bed" and it was actually pretty warm in the tent. then a barking dog came outside it and gro started growling etc... then i heard a womans voice and later realized she was probably looking in the tent "window" above me but i didnt realize it at the time.... i thought it was someone mad at me for being there but i told her i didnt speak spanish and she got me to come out and went and got her son and they told me how cold it was and they were going to show me somewhere better to stay...and they showed me this entryway to a building that was enclosed on three sides with a roof...but i tried to explain that i couldnt peg my tent there. then she asked did i want milk or coffee or anythign and said how cold out it would be...i asked her could i use her bathroom. adn she gave gro some water and me some bread for her. she was really sweet and it was her dog that had been barking at us...but i really wanted to ask her if i could sleep in her garage or something... when they told me they were showing me a better place to sleep i was hoping they were taking me inside somewhere... so as sweet as she was, i was a little disappointed.... anyway, we had an ok night but even with a sleeping mat the stones were HARD.

INTERNET!!

ok this is going to be way more abbreviated than i would like... its been 2 weeks since ive had internet opportunity and ive a couple pages handwritten that i want to put in but now that stuff is days old and it would take all night for me to inscribe it all...and i dont think i can hog this computer at this little bar all night.... hmmmm... so where to start....ill try to think of the hilights... we are in a little village just east of burgos. we should get to burgos tomorrow, after a LONG hike. we are so lucky tonite as we were able to get a room somewhere and there is internet downstairs. gro is upstairs sleeping and her cuteness got us in. today we did about 16k. thats about our limit. there are people passing us by doing 30 plus k a day but they dont have heavy packs with tents or pups with sore feet. 15 or 16 is about the limit for both of us i think. today we did 12k through a pine forest. in the rain and then fog. i realized i dont mind the rain and mist as long as its not cold or windy. the few days previous to this were horrid, we got stuck in a hailstorm one day and then got rain snow wind ice etc and tons of wind the next, and i really didnt know how we were going to make it through... turns out i guess that it was part of a hurricane. anyway, the forest was a really nice change from walking along roadsides..i have mixed feelings about when the path goes along roadsides...its nice to know im not totally alone, but frankly im sick of the traffic. there is so much BIG TRUCK traffic all of the time on the national road that runs near the path. one day we actually tried walking on the road instead of the path becasue it cut 4 or 5 k off. it was SO unpleasant. never again. anyway, the pine forest was nice, but not 12k of it.... it got kind of boring and it was so foggy you couldnt see ahead of you very far. there was nothing but forest, it was like a logging road. no villages, etc nothing. saw some logger, thats it. i had been told the first part was the hardest cuz it was through the ocs (sp?) mountains, and i thought we handled it ok and were done with the uphill, then i saw a straight up path ahead. it wasnt actually as bad as it looked but it looked awfully steep. i have a pick but this computer is old ibm too old to download. no place for flashdrive. grainne ended up on my major bad list for not only going after another dog coming towards us but for managing to pull me down face first in the mud with my 30 pound pack. the poor guy with the other dog didnt know what to do because obviously he couldnt grab grainne who was after his dog, but wanted to make sure i was ok and i was just like "dog you are SO dead" and then burst out laughing, as i was lying face down in the mud.... hmmm. not to much else interesting from today except that we got SO lucky with where we are staying tonite. tomorrow we try to get to burgos and then id like to take train to leon and then get to santiago walking from there. i dont think we can actually walk the whole thing, it would take another 6 weeks cuz we seem to only be able to do 15 k a day and would need to do 20 every day and thats just pushing us too much. the uncertainty of not knowing if we are going to have a place to stay at night is what really gets me, particulary since its turned so cold. the first week was beautiful sunny weather, still cold at night, but feasible to think about sleeping in the tent. now its crap weather and cold. i need to see if i can get another sleeping bag in burgos for grainne becasue she is cold and shivering every night even inside unless she is under blankets. i specifically got a LONG size sleeping bag with a bottom zipper thinking i could stuff her in the bottom every night but shes just too big and wants to stretch out. i also got a zero degree farenheight rated sleeping bag but its gonna get returned when i go home because im cold in it at 40 degrees... i dont know who the heck they get to be the testers for these temperature ratings on sleeping bags, but they are always SO wrong...


aside from today, grainne has usually been a delight to have as company. although at the moment i am worried about her hurting feet. although they dont seem to hurt any more when she sees another dog to try to attack, or a boy to try to run after and get attention from...she loves men SO Much, her whole body starts wiggling, tail wagging, and so excited when she sees a guy. shes SUCH a girl. she was in love with this tall italian guy at the albergue last night and the ONLY thing that kept her going through the snow and ice and rain on ?tuesday? was that there was a french guy about a quarter of a mile ahead of us that she had her sights set on. anyway, her whole life her problem is always that she wants more movement. here she gets it. i think she is getting a bit too much exercise actually though, as she'd be happiest with about 6 or 7 k a day.... so we´ll see.
OK i guess ill work backwards here..... but i guess taht will make this post particulary long... hmmmm.

in brief, we spent...lets see if i can remember.... a night outside pamplona, where i left my car, the next in puenta, which is the last time i had email access. the next in a church courtyard in ? i forget.... the next in estella where we got in trouble with the cops cuz the place was kind enuff to say g could come inside but only at 11 pm...so she proceeded to sit outside barking at every dog that went by until then and they called guy in charge of the place and he came back and got mad at me... all he would have had to do was let her sit inside the door and she would have shut up but we werent sposed to have dogs in there anyway so he was already doing me a favor....the next night we spent in lorca in a churchyard because i was afraid of the 12k with no villages that came after this. i didnt think we could do 20 whatever k. the next at an albergue with a bunch of people in...some town... i forget... the next night we tried to spend in vianna and ended up in tears at the albergue becasue they wouldnt let me even talk to the hospitalero..the cops actually followed me into the albergue and said no dogs and wanted me to leave her with some guy that wasnt home. i sobbingly told them forget it as i prepared us to go another 10k for a total of TWENTY EIGHT K.. to the next town, where we arrived after dark in the rain and were turned away from the albergue there and there wasnt even a place to put our tent..they tried to send us to the camping place but then it was closed for water damage... .... we got so lucky after me finally breaking down in tears after being forced out of a church entry way so they could lock up, and sent to another church, where they gave us our own meeting room, mattress, kitchen and shower for the night :) the next we had to pass on a town cuz they said no dogs so i thought we could stay at the next--vendosa--but after arriving in the dark, unable to go any further, and with nowhere else to go, we found the albergue closed for renovations, it freezing cold, windy, hurting feet, the village dark, no shop, no cafe open, nothing, and an old lady gave us bread and apples and went out of her way to take us to the top of the town where the church had a covered entryway...but ever try to peg a tent into mortar? it only works when the mortar is crumbing. this wasnt. that was probably our worst night. we spent the next 3 nights in azofra for a rest. then onto i forget where.... oh yeah, belorado, where there were NO albergues open and we had to get a guy to open one.. even though it was a big town. i bet i added on 3 k at least just walking around and around the town... then last night in villafranca where we slept on the freezing cold floor by a back doorway--preferable to being outside at least, where they wanted to put gro.... many people here think dogs belong outside but seriously gro would DIE. she would have died the first night. she cant handle the cold like these dogs can. and tonite here...

pamplona to ?puente de la rienta?...vitamineral green..and what can i send to myself in santiago...

ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL SUNSHINE TODAY. so nice to have sun for more than a few minutes, unlike in ireland. and way longer days too. about 8 am to 6 pm. in ireland we were dealing with 9am to 430 pm. what a drag. cold, but 45 or 50 in the sun.


made it the 20 km to puenta today. basically had to because looks like most of the albuergues in between the 20 km marks are closed for winter. i wasnt actually tired, but my feet are killing me... i spent a good part of the trek trying to decide what items i will mail to myself from here to pick up addressed to me at santiago... which brings me to : whats in my pack... : i dont think i have a normal pilgrims pack...here are some of the things that made it in.... --some of which will soon be going out in the mail to myself :p....
portable dog crate...yes. a pop up dog crate. was hoping this would enable me to get into hostels with dog but its just too much weight and seems like its going to be ineffective anyway... at the albergues tonite she was like ¨"no dogs. dog in garden. you inside. i initially had told her i had a tent and could i set it up in the yard and pay to use showers and kitchen. i kept insisting dog would not sleep quietly outside so i would sleep with her. she thought i was NUTS... well, we´lll see tomorrow morning if we totally Freeze tonite.. shes actually quiet at the moment after barking for a while she finally gives up but i will have to go back out for the night. i wish she wouldnt bark
various food-snob items: a small bottle of olive oil made it in, as did himalayan crystal sea salt with herbs, a bunch of nuts and raw chocolate, a pound of seaweed, some chia seeds, herb tea bags, and a few random other things. worried about nutrition so i packed the stuff...im not sure how people survive on the camino on just rice, bread, pasta etc, but others seem to be doing it.. oh yeah and VITAMINERAL GREEN.... the jar weighs about TWO POUNDS. my whole pack is only supposed to be 10 kilo.... but im not ditching that stuff... at the last minute i ditched a bunch of coconut oil vaccuum packs in the car. regret that one though. quick energy.. .
also in kristen´s pack... too much clothing,, namely a pair of huge, lined snow pants, ALSO getting mailed to self... i think id rather suffer in the rain or snow for a day or two than drag these pants all over "just in case". tent. sleeping bag. a bunch of those silver ¨emergency blankets" and yeah we are using them, both over and under the sleeping bag... also a small amount of dog food...yeah, that adds weight too. almost gone at least. i forget what else but i feel like i have some other unusual things in there too.. anyway...

todays trek was rather hard... much uphill, and through this clay-like mud that LITERALLY doubled the weight of your boots. and everytime you scraped it off it just stuck on more as soon as you walked... lovely scenery, lots of paths, rather than roadway...
and, BONUS: my dog still doesnt know how to heel properly most of the time. this actually totally came in handy today :p she acutually helped pull me up hills :) i spent most of the day with a spanish couple (thank goodness im not the only girl now like last night), and the guy asked to borrow grainne to help him get up hils :p id say grainne weathered the day better than i did...she was still bouncing by the end of it...of course she wasnt carrying anything.

ok have to go. time almost out. have to store up those one euro coins. only had one tonite. hope i can find somewhere to mail stuff to self tomorrow. bet i wont even be able to walk tomorrow but they only let u stay one night in each place so they basically kick you out and force you to go. sort of wish some of the in-between ones were open so not forced to do 20 k a day but doesnt look like a choice. on teh other hand, you might as well be walking. just easier if feet didnt hurt!

nite all

k

Eire to France to spain to pamplona to.....

OK, gonna be a quickie, since theres only 14 mn left on the internet time and noone else at the albuergue (hostel) can find any more one-euro coins to feed the machine... Im leaving pamplona tomorrow....doggie got left in the car tonite for the night so i could sleep inside'--havent slept in a bed since last friday night and dont know when i might be lucky enough to find another one...seems alot of the hostels are closed for the winter, which lessens our chances at staying at in-between places and hopefully talking our way in... the lady where i stayed tonite was adamant that the albergues dont allow dogs. i have a tent but would prefer not to sleep in it, at least not every night... ..alot of posts on the internet make it sound like you can get the key to the albuergues even if theyre closed but that doesnt seem to be necessarily the case... which means you HAVE to walk 20 km a day or else get a hotel. the worst part of my trip was actually the drive to the ferry in ireland. the ferry itself was fine, although i was amused to find out the next morning that the ferry was NOT supposed to be rolling around so much on the waves that you literally felt like you were drunk trying to walk around on it... i didnt know cuz id never been on a ferry that long distance before, but i wondered how people managed to eat anything at all when you could literally watch your whole body moving up and down with the waves. apparently there was alot of wind that day...next morning when we woke up (after sleeping on the floor of the lounge lol), it was calm. trip down through france was LONG. one thing i learned that i could have gone without knowing, though at least i know now, is that my car can go at least 45 kilometers AFTER the gas light goes on.... the gas stations in france are NOT spaced regularly...i wont get caught that short again. came through the pyrenees at night. absolutely beautiful, clear night, clear moon, etc. but made me really glad that i chose to start in pamplona not on the french side of the pyrenees. the guys at this hostel who started on the french side said they walked through blizzard the other day. the drive from france into spain though...well... DARN. i just lost the end of my post... computer shut off cuz no more money...then i discovered one last coin in my bag... so im on to finish it again, BEFORE the money is gone :) anyway.. the drive from france into spain though, it was like first i was somewhere i could communicate (or at least find a way to get what i needed by stringing words together ;p and i knew what words to string together...), then i crossed an "imaginary" line (well... actually a BORDER, but anyway, seemed imaginary to me; didnt even see a sign that said "entering spain"), and suddenly, i could no longer communicate. basically AT ALL. the best i could do was walk in somewhere, say ¨no hablo espangnol," and then start mime-ing (as in the case of trying to get boot water-proofer spray...i.e. say "impermeable" then make spraying motions and sounds towards shoes....) or walking around with my dictionary and pointing to words... or using a combination of french spanish english and oops i caught myself saying ¨"grazie" (italian) as i was leaving places sometimes too... it was really nice when someone would all of a sudden say ¨do you speak english¨ as i was struggling to explain, though as often as not i got more like blank stares when i said "usted habla anglais" "or francais?"
So my first night i spent sleeping on the floor of the lounge of the ferry in my sleeping bag. the second i spent in some little town in france, in a residential area in my car.... thing is that in both france and spain its difficult to judge the safety or lack thereof of the neighborhoods, unlike dc or seattle or whereever. in US cities you get a sort of vibe. here, it seems like everyone just shuts their shutters and goes inside fairly early, so driving around at midnight or after, its like driving through ghost towns.... especially the one i spent 2 nights in in spain..i HAD to get out of pamplona to sleep... i saw only one area that looked safe for parking car and sleeping in and then despite driving around and around for 45 minutes (after midnight)..., i still couldnt manage to find it again...yeah, it would have helped to have had a map of pamplona when i got here... so i ended up just driving out of the city to try to find a village or something that seemed safer. where i ended up ended up ok but was SO quiet it was spooky, and it had all these funny looking trees. so funny how everything just sort of shuts up and shutters up at night...

ok off to publish this before computer eats it again due to lack of sufficient funds. guess we are trying to go to puerte de la reinte (sp?) tomorrow but 20 k a day seems like alot. but seems like theres no hostels open in between during the winter. ah well, tomorrow night will be the real test, travelling with the dog. looking forward to teh walking but not to the looking for places to stay at night.