It’s Hard to Stop Walking

It was interesting just doing a short stage today, 12 kilometers to get into the village of Viscarret and it’s really quiet. Of course what happens when you arrive in the afternoon in some of these Spanish villages is it’s during siesta, so there isn’t really anyone around.

Once I got settled into my Casa Rural, which was very comfortable, I did my usual program routine of washing and getting everything ready for the next day. I then had about 5 or 6 hours to wait for dinner. Dinner wasn’t until 8 o’clock, so I started walking around the village and it was absolutely dead.

But it was interesting, a few other pilgrims started to emerge and what you ended up with was sort of individual couples of pilgrims wandering around the village and you kind of get drawn to each other because it was obvious that they were other pilgrims and then you get chatting, so I met a couple of other French ladies and the conversation didn’t go farther because my French isn’t very good.

Then I sat on a wall and talked to an American couple. They were just heading up to Saint Jean to start. I walked around the village for about four times, wandered down to the local shop and found a very nice Dutch couple. We just sat on a wall and chatted for 3 hours while waiting for dinner. They were actually staying in the same Casa Rural. But it’s interesting, you get to the stage when you enjoy the walking so much that it’s hard to just stop and sit, at least I find that difficult.

So I was walking around the village and looking at the yellow arrows and I felt myself drawn to those and I really just wanted to keep walking. I felt a little bit like a caged lion!