Postulating in Pamplona

Ola!

I hope this post finds you all well. I am writing this from the A/C comfort of an Internet cafe in Pamplona. That's right, Greg and I have walked from London to Spain. So now I go from speaking bad French to bad Spanish. To my utmost surprise I am still really enjoying the walking - I´d almost say I´m liking it more. Very strange. It seems we have walked over 1200 km to be here. As always, I am not short of random thoughts and I will now humbly lay them down before ye:

(I have updated the latest photos - these can be found in both the "Month 2" and "Camino Proper" sets. Unfortunately some of the earlier photos cannot be seen due to the limit on the free account).

- What did I make of France? Overall, I felt a bit like how I used to feel when a teenager and staying for a weekend at my granny's house. A pleasant enough experience with lots of politeness and respect but ultimately a bit dull. France just doesn´t seem to know how to have fun. Compared to the UK, pretty much every place I travelled through felt a bit quiet and under-populated and this was during their peek holiday season. Most bars and cafes would be lucky to have more than a dozen people in, and most of them would nurse a tiny glass of wine for the entire evening - that's IF they were feeling adventurous, otherwise it would most certainly be a soft-drink. Judging by the state of their economy, I would suspect that part of the reason for this phenomena is the low level of disposable income. The French, it appears, can´t afford to get their round in. I can´t remember seeing any significant evidence of 30 somethings having fun outside of their homes. Most venues seemed populated by young teenagers. I guess the 30+ are either in each others' homes or having clandestine meetings with one of their many lovers. Don´t get me wrong, France is a beautiful country with vast potential but it really does need Sarkozy to kick it´s socialist derriere into the 21st century.

French anecdotes continued...

- I still feel a little embarrassed when recalling that while in La Rochelle I mistook a piece of street "installation art" as a bin and duly placed my used kebab wrapper into the centre of the piece.

- In one of the campsites, Greg insisted on playing an arcade game called "Emergency Call Ambulance". Is it just me or is this a truly bizarre game concept? For a mere Euro you get to be the driver of an ambulance desperately trying to get various patients in a host of potentially life threatening states to hospital before both your time and their lives expire. Ostensibly a racing game, every time you hit the crash barrier or another vehicle you get to observe your patient going through a variety of life shortening seizures. If you crash badly enough or run out of time, so does your patient. Weird. Why does this game seem so wrong to me?

- Remarkably Greg and I have only have had one real disagreement. As you might expect, we have had lots of controversial conversations over the past three months. We have hotly debated topics including euthanasia, abortion, religion, politics, love, music, literature yet it wasn´t one of these debates that caused the final disagreement that resulted in us spending the day apart. The cause of our spat? The folding of a map. Or more accurately, the fact that I didn´t fold a map properly. Fortunately, our profound love and respect for one another, enabled us to heal the rift caused by this cartographic conflict.

- Greg and I walked past some French men having a bar-be-que about 3 metres away from where a petroleum lorry was pumping its cargo into a petrol storage facility. Despite our tired legs, we suddenly found the energy to significantly quicken our pace.

- While reading Aldous Huxley's "Island" (which is a truly badly written book but with some interesting ideas) I noticed two lines which I think are rather clever:

"We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way." Indeed.

- On one particularly good day, Greg and I walked over 40 kilometres without really planning to. On kilometre 37 Greg turned to me and said, "Just think, if we were on a golf cart we could have covered what took us a complete day, in less than an hour." When all this is over, I´m gonna miss Greg´s motivational talks.

- Near Hasparren (in Basque part of France - hot-bed of Basque independence resistance) Greg and I spent two nights in a Benedictine Monastery with monks. We spent one day attending all 6 services (first one at 6.20am) and as most of the prayers were sung I rather enjoyed the experience. Not understanding French, I suspect, was an advantage. The monks make and drink their own wine. As Greg and I are abstaining from alcohol and caffeine (and nicotine for Greg) we refused. How often do I get to appear more well-living than a monk?! We also ate with the monks. They eat in silence while one of them recites parts of religious texts. My main observation was the incredible speed with which these guys eat. I kid you not, I reckon they eat 3 course in less than 7 minutes. The place definitely needs a woman´s calming touch I thought but fortunately I withheld such non-conformist thoughts.

- And now to Spain. To be honest it´s too early for many thoughts. I am however deeply concerned as to the haircuts most women seem to be sporting here. The mullet seems very much in. Oh dear.

- The "Camino Proper" starts from Saint-Jean-Pied-a-Port and finishes at Compestella. So for the past 4 days (and for the rest of our pilgrimage) we have joined the multitudes of pilgrims. Compared to the previous 1200 or so kms this final "leg" feels very simple and relatively easy. I never thought I´d regard walking almost 800km (remaining distance) as "easy".

- Last night we stayed in a horrible pension. The owner was a drunk and the rooms were claustrophobic and dirty. Greg was convinced the mirror in the bathroom was two-way and that there was a dead person in the room next to us. I don´t know if Greg´s suspicions were founded but am distressed that today I have started itching again. And so it seems I remain on the samsara circuit... .

Adios. x