El Camino de Santiago - Via la Plata - Seville to Caceres - From Day One...

Walking from Seville (South West Spain) following one of the Pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. In a 'Holy Year' like 2010 if you complete the journey, your sins are forgiven for a decade...

Day One - April 9th 2010

NO 26 hour cross channel, cross country bus ride for me this year. Caught my flight from Bristol Airport and arrived swiftly to Sevilla Airport (Seville for those of you who still call Mumbay, Bombay ;-) Got my Rucksack from the baggage claim and caught the bus into the centre of the City, earwigging then asking a British lad meeting some family, who knew the score as to where I was likely to want to get off. I must find the Tourist Information office near the Cathedral, but first I must find The Cathedral, just to warn you I'm a country boy and cities are my worst nightmare as I get lost in a new place close to home let alone wandering around a strange new town in a foreign country.

One of the first things you learn when walking long distances over an extended period of time is to take very good care of your feet. Unfortunately I had forgotten this important nugget in the year since I completed a 500 Mile walk in April 2009, from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in North Western Spain. Historically Santiago was second only to Rome for Catholic Pilgrims from all over the world.

Strolling through the streets full of tourists, I finally found the Cathedral, it was the largest building around and well signposted. Wandering around it I discovered the Officina de Tourismo hidden away in the corner of one of the Plazas. Following their directions on a map they freely provided, I still managed to get slightly lost trying to find The Hotel Simon but eventually on increasingly tired feet, found the reception desk and managed to purchase my Pilgrim Passport and get my first stamp. On the Camino (The Way) you can stay in so called Pilgrim Hostels (Albergue or Refugio in Spanish depending on which autonomous region you are in at the time and the local language or dialect.) provided that you obtain your Pilgrim Credencial and it is filled out by the issuer.

It's almost always most difficult to find 'The Way' when leaving the middle of a town and to then head in the right direction, often the best thing to do is follow the road leading to the places you want to get to and hope that there is a yellow arrow on the pavement, or a wall , sometimes there are special paving slabs with the emblem of the Camino, the Scallop Shell emblazoned upon them. In the countryside the way markers can be as simple as a group of stones on the path in front of you or a faded yellow arrow on a tree or rock. You have to follow the last one you saw until another appears. Wandering aimlessly through the frankly grimy and depressing industrial outskirts of a big Town or City is really frustrating, especially when like me you've decided to make it more of an adventure by not having a seriously detailed guidebook with you (as many of our European cousins do, e.g. The Germans, more on them later). The picture on the left is of a group of Spanish youths, congregating down by the river to socialise, unfortunately they were all under the impression that being a Goth is the way to go, hundreds of Kevin the Teenagers hanging out with their other miserable looking friends.

My feet, legs, hips, shoulders and arms were killing me because I hadn't really practised carrying over 10 kilos in my pack for any length of time and I had also not prepared by covering my feet in vaseline before leaving home that morning. It sounds slightly disgusting but it really works to prevent the friction that causes the heat that causes the first blisters to arrive. Prevention is definitely easier than the cure I can assure you, I didn't forget to look after my poor tootsies after that reminder. Making my way finally past the Stadio Olympico de Sevilla (their enormous football stadium) and what looked like a really nice park. they certainly know how to provide their residents with leisure facilities in Spain. I managed to find the Canal that I was looking for as dusk was approaching fast but not the bridge over it, the only one in the area (that I'd found) being for trains and definitely not for people painfully walking. I decided to camp on the bank overnight and tried to pick somewhere as far from roads and people as possible, partly for security and partly because I still wasn't that far out of Seville and wanted a quiet night.



Day Two - April 10th 2010
Waking up at 5:00am, which is a completely unnatural thing for me and having stirred several times in the night due to the sound of music in the distance, once for a wee and once with a fright at what I thought was someone approaching but was probably just a dream, I decided to pack up and use the early hours of the morning and the lack of people around to calmly find the route of the Camino and head to the first place to stop on my itinerary, Guillena. Retracing my steps of the previous evening along the crazy paving of the muddy canal bank I discovered the cause of the loud music was an impromptu rave, sound system in a small van, trestle tables for the bar and lots of those Gothic looking kids from yesterday barely moving moodily to the music. I stopped long enough to blag a drink of water as I'd run out (add that to the list of things I'd forgotten despite all my experiences before) luckily they are kind enough to supply it to the ravers and me too. I was tempted to stop, buy a beer and hang out but common sense suggested moving on before the heat of the day arrived. You have to have your wits about you when walking in a strange place but even more so in Spain, quite often there are inexplicable holes in the ground, storm drains and other obstacles that you can quite easily miss and fall foul of if you're not careful, this is even more important when the sun hasn't come up yet and you are following a main road. Arriving at Santiponce, the first place en-route but not where I intended to stay for the night, I decided to wait there for my friend Astrid. Whilst exploring I saw my first official sign of the Camino, a wall tile with the logo and the name of the Route. Astrid was leaving that morning from Seville and would catch me up later in the day. We had originally met in 2009, a week into my trip across the North of Spain and kept in touch, deciding to take on this route when she arrived back in Europe after five months in South America.

Spotted my first so called 'Seville Orange Tree'. The only reason there are any Oranges still on there is that they are extremely bitter and only someone who would have to add a lot of sugar to their orange juice or who makes their own Marmalade picks them.

Once Astrid arrived we said our hello's and made our way out of the village, I'd already seen about half a dozen other pilgrims make their way past me so I knew that there were quite a few others undertaking the same journey. We reached the countryside and as Bamboo grows in great quantities all over the area I quickly found two pieces of roughly the same length to become the perfect hollow lightweight walking aids. Walking sticks aren't for everyone, it looks silly, you feel absurd using them but who cares when your feet are killing you, your hips feel as though they will crack imminently and everything else is sore after only one short days walk and a pretty awful nights sleep. We soon arrived in Guillena and found that the Hostel, which was just a room full of bunk beds with a toilet and shower on either side, was full. Next stop the local community center, following the Policia Locales (village beat bobby's) to grab gymnastic mats and lug them back to the Hostel down the street. They helpfully let us painfully carry them ourselves, and stood & watched while Astrid and the woman from the cafe who was helping us out carried two between them, and they say chivalry is dead...

Astrid cooked her dinner, my turn to use her stove until I can get fuel for mine
Strawberries and tinned pineapple for pudding yum yum...