Camino Frances: Day 3 - Descents, Reflections, and a Medieval Fair | Day 252 of my 2023 Journal

Camino Frances. Day three

We started early, in the darkness. There was still lightning on the horizon when Cheryl, Porter, Liv, and Erik arrived at the van forty minutes before planned.

It was a weird hostel, so they left. We walked at 08.05. There was light, and we started the long descent.

For kilometer after kilometer, we walked down down down on flat stone and loose stone, and rock and mud and grass and dirt road and asphalt. It was beautiful, especially the morning was outstanding in the morning light, the clouds emerging from the damp mountains, and the shadows changing. And our knees felt it. And our calves felt it.

We had the 25 from the day before in the legs and felt it.

Down down down. 


Like Alice in the Rabbit Hole somehow, just harder.

The Camino is an existential experience. It is radical how physically challenging it is, how the exhaustion will distract me from thinking, making way for a different experience. It feels this way: I am so tired, cracks open in how I usually hold myself together, and this is where the Camino steaks in, making its mark. A very welcome mark. I feel vulnerable. I feel strong. I feel held. I feel the vastness of it all, especially of the beauty. I stop thinking, especially overthinking. Take what is. Trust the process. Trust I can do it even when I feel, I can not.

Eventually, the landscape was more flat, and Ponferrada was closer. The last four kilometers felt like nine: flat sidewalk, a detour around the city before entering, a sharp sunshine.

When we arrived in Ponferrada, somehow, I got up again while Jesper was picking up the van and went shopping so I could cook some real food. Liv's knee was acting up, swelling and warm, so her lovely Erik, who had not slept, ran around the entire city to find an open pharmacy - as it was a public holiday, most were closed - and get her stuff to help it.

I cooked and rested a bit before we all went to a fair at the medieval castle.

With love

Cecilie Conrad

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