My Camino
Day 25 — Shins splint cont.
After a bad night of restless sleep and worrying about my injury, I was delighted to find out that I could walk. Yes, my shin was sore, but the pain was milder. The ankle support was helping, ibuprofen was reducing my pain. We had a lovely eggy breakfast in Fenix (Spanish people couldn’t live without eggs, they consume thousands of them, sorry vegan travellers) and walked across Villafranca. The rain stopped and it was a nice brighter day. This little town looked really pretty with its rapid river rushing under a picturesque bridge and with tall mountains closing in all around. The further we walked the more painful it was. It wasn’t good, in fact I was a bit worried that I would do myself a long lasting harm if I carried on.
After passing a few villages, showcasing their long wooden balconies the path joined the highway. As I limped along large lorries would pass by. I was grateful for a small crash barrier separating us from the traffic, not very heavy, but traffic nevertheless.
My shin hurt, I felt a burning sensation, I could feel the bare bone each time my foot hit the hard tarmac. We didn’t know what to do, obviously we had to carry on, we couldn’t just stop on the side of this highway and camp for the night! Martin took my rucksack, put it around his neck and walked like this for the rest of the way. We were passed by quite a few of pilgrims smiling with understanding seeing Martin — the hero, and looking down on me the limping wimp!
Slowly struggling along the route I saw many black slugs crawling on the path next to the road. Their slippery black bodies were so perfect, glistening in the sun. They were slowly progressing to their destination, wherever it was, obviously not bothered by many heavy boots of walkers. They carried on regardless, slowly but surely, without any visible casualties. Good luck little fellows —I feel you! If you can do it, I can do it too!
The initial plan was to get all the way to la Faba. We were approaching a long hike up the hill, apparently that was the next difficult bit after the Pyrenees, so stopping in La Faba would break the uphill hike. However we decided we wouldn’t be able to make it this far with my injury and decided to have a shorter day. We only walked 17 kilometres that day and stopped in a private room in a small albergue in Vega del Valcarce. This nice village was dominated by a massive concrete motorway bridge that was nearly as high as the surrounding mountains.
I was devastated. I really wanted to walk, but couldn’t. I lay on the bed, elevating my injured leg. Maybe some rest will do me good? Feeling dishearten and sad, I was looking through my notes I always make on my phone. I was scrolling down, touched something clumsily with my thumb and noticed with horror that all my notes from 25 days were gone!!! All deleted!!! Normally when you want to delete something you get a message: Are you sure you want to delete this massage/photo/video, anything? Apparently you don’t get such warning when the whole month of notes are concerned! That’s it, all gone! No!!! Stupid Camino! What have you got against me! Why are you so hard on me? What have I done? Look at my husband, snoring loudly on his bed, free from any thoughts, pain and contemplation. Yet, he is blissfully unharmed, whereas I am being put through hell! Why! So unjust!
The angry thoughts raged through my head! I was in pain, lost all my notes, couldn’t walk any longer! At that point I felt the lowest I had felt during the entire journey. Panic, anger, feeling of failure all merged into one.
And then I remembered the good times I had had on this trip, I reminded myself how lucky I was that I was able to participate in this adventure (at least up to this point). With all that in mind I calmed down a little, worked out how to retrieve my notes (phew!) and then took some deep breaths. Don’t despair, tomorrow is a bright new day. After a while Martin woke up and we went for something to eat. Then had an early, quiet night. No doubt all of our friends went much further that day. Will we ever see them again?
