We’re heading to Wales on Wednesday to stay with family. Lots of grandparent-grandchild bonding is on the cards, as (hopefully) is a bit more progress on updating the book.
Updating from someone else’s notes is a completely different experience. Partly because Daphne’s notes are so much more coherent than Ben’s or mine are, and partly because we can edit as Daphne walks. So hopefully a faster editing experience too.
Now I’ve gone and cursed us. Wait for the oh-no-my-technology-just-exploded post that’s bound to follow soon.
The great thing about multiple forms of communication is that we can hear from people in lots of different ways all at the same time. Today, a package arrived from Daphne, from Burgos. So, in the last week we’ve heard by phone, multiple e-mails and post from Daphne. In this kind of situation, there’s no such thing as information overload.
Got a lovely long e-mail from Daphne today.
From April 20:
Mud.
It has rained alot.. and thus the camino is mud. It sticks to your boots, it coats your pants, and it slows your pace. We all spend alot of time trying to figure out the best way to walk around a puddle that has no way around it!! I am very happy that this time I have (semi)waterproof boots. I just walk through the mud and the puddles and up the streams that flow frequently down the camino.
It hasn´t been all rain and snow and hail. Today was sunny and cool. Perfect walking weather!
THe other day I came upon a beverage (coke) machine. Not only did it offer the usual camino/pilgrim offerings of water, juice and coke, but it also had 3 other choices so I dropped in one euro, hit the button and down fell a bottle of white wine!! From Bodegas de Irache! Yes, I was at the Fuente de Irache.
From May 2:
Today was cool and a bit of sun.. a perfect morning for 4 hours of walking on the stretch of the meseta (plains) that is know as the 17km without water, nor shade, nor a coffee shop!! I did come across a man sitting beside his car, at a table with a dispenser of coffee and a few cans of juice. I think usually there is a ¨mobile cafe¨there but today is Saturday
in the middle of a ¨Puente¨ and thus lots of things aren´t as usual. ( a Puente is when a holiday falls near a weekend, this year May 1 was Thursday, and so everyone takes the friday off and towns are busy, the camino is crazy busy with people walking for just 4 days, and things are closed… )
Yesterday I arrived in Carrion de los Condes at 7:30 pm. I left the lovely Albergue de San Nicholas, an old pilgrim´s monastery though only a small building remains. It is now a may to oct albergue run by a cofradia from Italy. 10 beds, a communal meal, the tradition of washing pilgrims feet with a blessing added continues… lovely. When I got up in the night to go next door to the bathroom, the sky was full full full of stars!! This is what I love about the camino.
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Daphne also reports that the camino is really busy, and that lots of albergues have single and double rooms now.
Daphne del Camino called us on Monday. She’s in Burgos, making great progress! We also picked up the package of information and updates that Daphne sent from Logroño today. It’s so wonderful to hear from Daphne and to see what an amazing job she’s doing of updating the information in the guide.
Walking the camino vicariously feels really strange. Like a parallel universe. Maybe I’m getting too existential and should go back and join Ben, who’s brewing beer tonight.
It seems so odd that in a week that I’ve been thinking about Spain often, as Daphne del C updates Walking the Camino de Santiago, that I’ve had so many conversations with people who are planning to walk the camino. Colleagues, library patrons, students, whoever, everyone seems to have heard of the camino & are keen to do it. It’s inspiring in so many ways, and I’m not a little jealous!
Meanwhile, back at base, we’ve received our first package from Daphne, who’s doing an amazing job of updating information and adding useful new information.
A few things Daphne has suggested follow…. I’d be really interested to hear if readers think these would be valuable additions:
- details about camping/outdoor stores
- whether a town has a pharmacy
- whether a town has an Internet cafe
- whether an albergue has Internet
- whether an albergue has a washing machine / laundry facilities
Buen Camino to Daphne & everyone else heading to Santiago in the next little while…….
Some of our fonts are out of whack and we need to decide which ones we are using. More lay out issues to save up for later. I spent the day adding the updates form the map into the text of the new 3rd edition. Got as far as Burgos. Had to go slow so that I didn’t make mistakes with all the numbers and bold and regular fonts.
There has been some rain in Spain but sadly it looks like it is not going to be enough to overt another dry summer. Global warming?
I heard that Luis Aragonés the coach of Spain is going to do the Camino if Spain win the Euro 2008. Maybe we should send him the book and map. Here is the link http://www.marca.com/edicion/marca/futbol/seleccion/caminoeurocopa2008/es/desarrollo/1112602.html
He is 77 so it would be a good effort. I think he should do it anyway. Spain to win? I would love it to happen and they are my pick but I really can’t see anything but another failure. I hope I am wrong.
I am in St Jean Pied de Port, the foot of the pass over the Pyrenees and into Spain tomorrow!
I have walked for 3 1/2 days from Bayonne, France on the southwest coast. It is an alternative route and not well known but was very well marked (except for when I got lost!) and so I was the sole pilgrim on the way. I stayed in hotels as there was no other option usually and frankly, I relished the idea of a hot bath at the end of a long day! The first day was along the Nive river and was hot and sunny. And then the rain came. Thus the hot bath!! And now that I am so high up it is cold and crisp and there is snow up on the pass to Roncesvalles, Spain. I will be walking the lower route this time, as are most
of the pilgrims right now.
My feet are fine, a few tiny baby toe blisters. And I love that my new boots are waterproof!! Rain and walking through high grass and all is well. I took a fall 2 days ago when I stepped down into a bar with a wet floor from the rain and fell on my left leg with my pack on. It could have been a disaster. Instead it is a bruise and a sore calf and a few ibuprofen. Another reason why I am resting today.
As usual, I am carrying too much! But the wool clothes are perfect and I have finished my novel so tossed it! I can’t resist big pieces of fromage de brebis, sheeps milk cheese, and I am in love with the baguets here!
Last night I spent in St Jean le Vieux (4 km back!) in a new gite d’etape for pilgrims. It just opened and myself and a french couple were their first pilgrims!!
I took notes along the route from Bayonee for Ben and Bethan to add to their guidebook or to put on the internet and thus stopped today in St Jean to organize my notes, and be a tourist. I have passed through St Jean twice before but never spent a night here. Tomorrow I begin to update the guidebook! (Ben, I have already mailed you tourist info from Bayonne and St Jean PdeP)
I have done very well with my french, if I do say so!! I think I am mostly speaking in the present tense but I am understood. The “guide” that I used to walk from Bayonne was all in french so it was good practise. Here in St Jean I
have already spoken to a few tourists in spanish as it is saturday and a popular place to visit for the day. Spain is all of 10km or so by road away I think.
Done the new drawings now. The flora and fauna section should look a lot sharper now. Would love to add colour but it is just too expensive. Too bad really
We’re thinking of changing the textual descriptions of the albergue facilities to symbols. Most of them we have, from earlier editions of Walking the Camino de Santiago and from the Camino de Santiago Map book, but Daphne is keen to include Internet access & washing machines too.
I’m on a symbol hunt, but if anyone’s seen anything suitable, please let me know.
Bethan
I arrived Thursday at heathrow’s new Terminal 5, and left there with my luggage! So it has improved since those first disasterous newscasts… I spent a lovely night with my camino friend Willie whom I met 5 years ago on the 3rd day of walking the camino my first time… We only walked together 1 day and hung out in Pamplona together one day and yet we have managed to stay in touch and I visit he and his wife every time I pass through.
I am now NW of London near Buckingham at my camino friend Sybille’s and her anglican minister husband Ricky. They live in a teeny hamlet that consists of the priest’s house (The Rectory), the church, a school, some homes and of course, a pub.. the Red Lion. Sybille was the hospitalera that I volunteered a lot with on the camino in 2003 and 2004.
I arrived her to 18degrees and sun and woke up this morning to snow!!! Not doing much more than getting over the jet lag, reading and visiting though last night I was at the local hall for the annual cricket club dinner and dance! The theme was mexican so even though I had no appropriate costume/outfit Sybille and I were able to say that our outfit was that we speak the language!
I head to Bayonne/Biarritz on Tuesday and plan to start walking from there on Wednesday.. snow or not!
Daphne del Camino
After some very comical attempts to draw this large bird. I think I have managed to do a half decent likeness. Maybe I’ll even post it once I check it over a few more time. Also being added and already drawn is the yellowhammer. A wonderful bird that I enjoyed seeing in Navarra and beyond.
Need to sort out our paperwork before we head to Wales in about a months time.
redoing the wildlife section and wanted to update some of our images. Spent about 2 hours wrestling with the scanner then Beth came into the office and fixed it in two seconds. Very annoying. Now have to catch up.
Daphne leaves for Spain via the UK tomorrow. Can’t wait to hear how she is getting on. Hope the snow has gone from the mountains
Still wading through the “to do list” and get everything moving ahead towards the new edition. Time is one thing which we do not have lots off. Even less now that I have spent a morning rebuilding our office and clearing the clutter maybe I have turned into one of those clutter-nutters!
We are going to be adding more birds to the wild life section and dropping a few of the animals which someone is really never going to see even if they walked the camino every day of their lives. Gone are the Iberian Lynx, and the Otter and one or two others. To make the book more useful we really need to have things that people are going to see so we are going to add some of the more common birds. All I need to do now is do the drawings and hope they look better then our European tree frog which I am also going to redraw. If anyone has any suggestions of what they would like to see added let me know
It seems much easier to be back doing a book then a map. Not sure why that is. Maybe I am just over confident about the whole idea. Saw on the bbc site that they have found another early stone age find along the camino. How I would love to be involved with that dig.
Weather isn’t looking good for those setting off on the camino from St Jean. Snow and rain. hope it clears up the time Daphne is there in about 2 weeks. Brrrr.
Daphne del Camino came over for dinner last night and we managed to hammer out the final details of the research we need her to do for us. I think Beth and I both wish we where going with her but sadly it isn’t going to happen this edition.
She is going to check the Valcarlos route and some of the other detours and quite routes. The Valley of Silence is one that I am very keen to find out about and the high route via Dragonte. The more detours the better as far as we see it.
We have already started work on the third edition. Once more I have been battling km distances to Santiago. Also switching everything over to Indesign from Quark. reformatting is such a pain!
I was talking to our printer today about trying to reduce the weight of our book. It seems we have reached a critical size where it is almost impossible to use lighter paper. As it become difficult to go through the printing press at lighter then 40lb and also is more prone to tear.
So that means if we want to go lighter we have to cut out sections. Not sure if we really want to do this.
Ben and I had a meeting tonight to talk about goals and deadlines for the new edition of Walking the Camino de Santiago. We hammered out things we want to change, things we may have to make room for, and tried to be realistic about what we can and can’t do in the time we have. We haven’t quite got round to firming up deadlines, maybe because we’re missing the traditional meeting bottle of red wine.
I was going to call this post Unrealistic Goals & Moveable Deadlines, but I thought it would scare Daphne off too much.
Bethan
In 2008, Pili Pala is updating our book, Walking the Camino de Santiago. This will be the third edition of Walking the Camino de Santiago.
We really liked blogging our mapbook project, and got some valuable
feedback along the way. So we decided to go the blog route again for Walking the Camino de Santiago.
This time, we get to stay at home while someone else has all the fun in
Spain! Our friend and camino junkie, Daphne Hnatiuk, is going to be
updating the guide for us. Daphne’s walked the camino many times, and
has returned to be an hospitalera (pilgrim hostel volunteer) in different albergues (pilgrim hostels) along the route. So this blog will be a mix of
Daphne’s experiences along the camino, and our experiences of updating the information and getting the book ready for print.
As with the mapbook project, we’d love to get feedback from readers old and new. Anything you’d like to see in the book, anything you love from earlier editions, anything you can live without, please let us know by replying to posts.
On with the adventure……
Bethan