Wow. As today went on it sank in on me that this might have been the day that I finally arrived in Santiago de Compostella and it was.
That’s a silly little sketch of such an important day. Actually, I find I have far less memory of it than I would have supposed, or than I’d like. It’s interesting to try to cast my mind back without first reading any blog post I did back then. I know it wasn’t a great day as the road switchbacked up and down. Here, as I’ve finally succumbed and used Strava (www.strava.com), is a Strava profile of it.
I know it was all feeling a bit odd. I was realising that Finisterra really wasn’t going to happen, at least not on Toto, and I was tired and perhaps there was a feeling almost of anticlimax and of having to get on with my life without the goal that had driven the ride. It’s mostly nice countryside with some interesting sights but it’s not visually exciting in the way that many of the earlier days had been. As it’s now well to the West the countryside is pretty much as green as rural UK and very different from the parched country of many earlier days in Spain.
Perhaps looking back at it now is also a bit overshadowed by the last few days. I’ve been away in South Wales Thursday to yesterday as I/we had real anxieties about my father’s health. Thursday night brought a lot of relief to find out that the lesions are precancerous but absolutely not urgent, not life threatening and, though they do need curettage, that can be done at leisure some time in the next few months (perhaps on the 25th when I’ll be back down there to go with him for the next appointment). Besides that stuff, even the camino has to take a back seat.
Well, well. I have now re-read my posts from last year and see that, on the day, I hadn’t quite given up on Finisterra but I know I did pretty much that evening. So odd reading the main post from last year: https://www.psyctc.org/pelerinage2016/a-bit-more-about-this-final-dayleg/ I think I really do have to stop now and let this all mull. Old friend staying the night so I’ll switch from rather limp muttering/blogging to myself to talking with Rose. Enough. Much, much more to do and be blogged about last year so I will let the revisiting stretch out to Christmas I think and there are trips to Barcelona (next week), back to South Wales and to Italy (mostly Bologna and Modena) and a big family wedding all in the next three weeks so I think 2017 will be fighting 2016 for blog digestions. Thanks for reading, anyone who has been!