Camino de Santiago Day Twelve: Arrés to Ruesta: Life Among The Ruins

I walked the extra mile on the Camino this morning. I hope it helps me get to heaven.

We'd left the Albergue in tiny Arrés early and started down the winding road out of town. Arrés is one of those typical Spanish villages that started life as a mountain fortress of sorts, and as such sits high - at least 400 metres - above the plains on a rocky outcrop. We'd just reached the valley floor when It dawned on me that we'd forgotten to feed the donation box. So it's back up the hill with a fifty clutched in my hand. The Cordoban looked suitably impressed when I dashed into the Albergue, sweating profusely and too out of breath to speak, and dropped our contribution into the box.

Like I say, I hope it earned me bonus Camino points.

We had our two tins of sardines and an apple we shared for lunch in a nice shady spot followed by a quick siesta, and then set off to Ruesta. For more or less the entire time we had monster construction vehicles rushing around kicking up dust and making a huge racket. They seem to be working on expanding the man-made lake we're walking next to. I'd read that this lake is the reason why the village of Ruesta was abandoned years ago, as it was expected that it may disappear beneath the rising water.

Which is why I was looking forward to our stay.

Ruesta didn't disappoint. It was like we'd just arrived at Angor Wat; the place is stuffed with overgrown ruins, crumbling towers and windows through which vines are crawling (which, coming to think of it, is a description of many Spanish villages. But that's another story). We had to search for a few minutes to find the folks running the albergue, two young hippies who were sitting under a delapidated pergola reading dog-eared copies of Isabel Allende and a Spanish translation of a Trotsky biography, and consuming massive mugs of beer. Not only were we at Angor Wat, we were also at an ashram in Goa! A Spanish radio station blared sixties music from tinny speakers. Their welcome was warmhearted and sweet.

The albergue building is a spacious, very new stone building and we got the presidential suite, so to speak, because we were the only visitors. I sniffed around the ruins for the rest of the afternoon, camera in hand, but much of it was off-limits for fear of the whole lot tumbling down on an unsuspecting pilgrim.

So I sat down below the high walls in the greenery and imagined arriving here as a poor pilgrim, and being welcomed to his expansive castle by a hospitable, aristocratic lord.

We shared the evening meal with two friendly late-comer pilgrims. The food was absolutely five star (I tried enquiring whether there was a chef in the house but never got a straight answer), and the lengthy meal felt more like an outing at a class restaurant with good friends.

Just like it would have been eight hundred years ago, coming to think of it.

Bottom line: Don't miss Ruesta on the Camino Aragones. You're treated like a noble.

Camino de Santiago Day Eleven: Santa Cruz de la Seros to Arrés: Air Guitar and Catalans

So we're doing a brisk pace, about two kilometers down this out-of-the-way footpath from Santa Cruz leading down to Santa Celia. I've got the headphones on, jamming to Frank Zappa. I'm standing on a little grassy knoll playing air guitar; Adeline's gone ahead, too embarrassed to have me in sight.

Suddenly this little fiery-eyed fellow, about five foot four surprises me from behind, shoots past and pauses. He gives me a look, like, dude, what are you on? and I compose myself. He's carrying about twenty kilos, wearing a blood-red ultra-marathon T-shirt and well-worn Merrells. As these scenes go, he hits me with his five words of English and I hit right back with my five of Spanish. Turns out he started in Barcelona, going all the way to Santiago.

Then he disappears into the bushes up front.

xxxxxxx

Earlier in the morning we'd been standing, backpacks on and ready, waiting for the Santa Cruz church to open. At exactly ten o'clock a young Spanish chap appears, ignores us, walks up to the massive wooden door, closes his eyes, leans his head against it for about thirty seconds.

Then he turns, greets us politely, unlocks the door.

The visit to the rather over-renovated church I'd largely forgotten, but I remember his good-morning prayer so clearly. These are the golden moments of El Camino.

The 18km walk right up to Arrés, our overnight stop, was uneventful. But as usual a thought occurred to me. The town of Puenta la Reina de Jaca on the way there is a dusty, featureless truck stop, even though the 16th century arch bridge it refers to was important, no, vital to early pilgrims. Now pilgrims walk to the town by crossing the bridge, buy chips and a cold drink from the petrol station, walk back across the bridge and carry on without giving any of it much thought or photo moment.

We reached the Arrés albergue late afternoon and lo and behold, there was fiery-eyed Catalan sitting on a bench in the fading sun with his Merrells off. The rest of the evening was surreal - a dinner featuring our Catalan friend, a sixty-something, boisterous Bavarian with an impressive Bayern Munich tatoo, and an Italian priest freshly back from Cameroon after being chased away by Boko Haram. All hosted by a cheroot-smoking Cordoban with dark eyes and purple hair. We just sat there taking in the conversations, simulcast in French, Afrikaans, English, German, Dutch and a smattering of Catalan.

And then we went to bed. It's been a long day.