I woke just after six in the morning to the sound of rain beating against the window shutter on the bedroom window. Here is the rain that was forecast, I thought, and rolled over and tried to get some more sleep. Didn’t work. I got up and opened the shutter and watched the rain fall thickly on the grass outside. I started considering options. Walk in the rain, wait til later in the day when it was supposed to taper off, take a bus, and so on. By the time I had risen, had a shower (in the itsy bitsy shower stall), dressed and packed my mochila the rain had diminished to a steady drizzle. Before I knew it, I pulled on my handy dandy Hefty trash can liner and was out on the street following the Camino and wistfully watched as a bus to Lugo went by.
The drizzle soon let up even more and I was able to walk without handy Hefty all the way to Lugo. By now, the steep climbs and descents were behind me, the trails were mostly good, and there were no stops along the way for a coffee or orange juice. The drizzly day did remind me of a time when I was in college hitch-hiking back from a spring break in New Orleans to catch a Grateful Dead/Fleetwood Mac concert during Mardis Gras and I found myself after two days of heading north in a pouring rain in Chattanooga, Tennessee and experienced a sense of total defeat. Not despair or demoralization, but complete and utter defeat. I called my Uncle Tom in Chicago, who knew the right people all over the States. Soon a friend of his found me and gave me a bus ticket to South Bend, bringing to a close one of the craziest episodes in my life. I will save that story for later!
Figuring this was going to be my last day of walking, I was watching the kilometer markings. I wanted to get within at least 100 kilometers of Santiago. Just before entering the walled old town of Lugo, I accomplished this feat.
I arrived at my pension in Lugo in record time. Of course, the room was not ready so I went down to the train station to see if I could get a later train. Not that I don’t like Madrid, but I was here to walk the Camino. As it turned out, there was a seat available on June 12 so I grabbed it. Now it was just a matter of changing all the hotel reservations I had made.
El Peregrino 