Not the Blair Journey

[Gardengirl]

Cathy, there's this map from Wikipedia, which I'm using to follow the route:

 

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Routes_de_St_jacques_de_Compostelle.svg

Edit: sorry, it won't show as the map, just the link.

 

[pachapapa]

[quote user="gardengirl "]

Cathy, there's this map from Wikipedia, which I'm using to follow the route:

 

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Routes_de_St_jacques_de_Compostelle.svg

Edit: sorry, it won't show as the map, just the link.

 

[/quote]

It was posted earlier at the top of Page 5 but this thread looks set for the long haul, you girls have my admiration, so a repost may be convenient.

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Routes_de_St_jacques_de_Compostelle.svg/712px-Routes_de_St_jacques_de_Compostelle.svg.png[/IMG]

[Kitty]

Thank you for the map.  I am going to some research.  I do hope that Sweets and Gem are not getting the ghastly weather that we have been getting today (Friday) north of Bordeaux.  There was a massive double rainbow in the sky this morning but it has rained cats and dogs ever since.

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Cathy"]Thank you for the map.  I am going to some research.  I do hope that Sweets and Gem are not getting the ghastly weather that we have been getting today (Friday) north of Bordeaux.  There was a massive double rainbow in the sky this morning but it has rained cats and dogs ever since.

[/quote]

S&G are now to west of the rain, morning looks cool and cloudy but improving in the afternoon with warm sunshine.

I give you my favourite spanish rain in spain website.

http://www.eltiempo.es/

[Gardengirl]

Pachapapa, How did you do that please? Does it have to be put in a word document or something first?

 

[Salty Sam]

A good site providing the history, together with interesting information of the routes, and detailed maps can be found via this link;

[url]http://www.csj.org.uk/routes.htm[/url] 

[mint]

Thank you for all your kind thoughts and words of encouragement and advice.

I am in need of them all, especially as the asthma has got worse (but then that always happens in the spring and autumn so nothing new there).  I am in Fromista this afternoon, after struggling through only 14 km.  And it was lovely walking country...nice and green, flat and alongside a canal, the Canal del Castilla.

Anyway, been to the Centro Salud and seen a doctor.  Both the doctor and the receptionists were so much nicer and kinder than the previous ones in Santo Domingo.  I have a prescription for antibiotics and another pump.  Of course, this being Spain, the farmacia is closed and I am waiting for 4 o´clock so that I can go and get my drugs!  No, NOT the kind that pumps you up full of energy unfortunately! 

This morning, in a village called Boadilla del Camino, I saw something quite remarkable.  It was in a church and was a figure of Christ on the cross but as a CHILD!  Never having seen such a sight before, I grabbed hold of an Italian man I´d met minutes earlier when I was having breakfast in a cafe and asked him whether he´d ever seen such a representation of Christ.  He was quite emphatic that in all his life (bearing in mind his nationality) he´d never seen anything like it.

Unfortunately, I am unable to use my camera and so I cannot post a picture so I will just have to describe it for you.  Christ was a child of about perhaps 5 or 6 with the usual blue eyes and fair hair.  (Clearly this child was not father to the man:  sorry, couldn´t resist the quip).  He was leaning on the cross in a very relaxed manner, looking for all the world like someone leaning on a fence:  sort of laid-back and with a half smile on his face.  It was quite unnerving as this child clearly had no inkling of what was to come later on in his life.  It was very poignant, IMHO.

You know, when I was a little girl, I remember my mother bought me a doll just like this figure.  The doll was also blue-eyed and blonde and she had eyelashes and moveable eyelids that closed when you laid her down.  Strange I should think about this doll at this time but it was so wanted and so loved.  No, I won´t draw conclusions for you as it would be presumptious of me and, anyway, I am no philosopher.

[pachapapa]

If you go to the link below and scroll down to the 4th "How to"; you will find the approved this forum method of posting a picture. Whilst the method does work it, it is a tad complicated; PPP uses a different method which PPP believes to be simpler.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1758955/ShowPost.aspx

P.S. The prescribed method involves putting an image on Photobucket or some similar site which is probably in breach of copyright.[:D]

As an example of the speed and simplicity of the PPP method; here is a map showing ALL the routes to santiago de Compostela, pulled from the link given by SS.

Map removed by Mods because of copyright. To view the map use the link below.

http://www.csj.org.uk/map.htm

 

[Gemonimo]

Well, Sweets, you aren´t far behind me - tonight I´m in Mansilla de las Mulas after a very, very boring walk. And long, too. I have been walking with a lovely french lady who had a mega fall last year and ended up in hospital and decided to carry on this year. Manque de peau, she now has tendonitis and is leaving from Leon tomorrow and will finish next year.

We are just off out for a pilgrim´s meal which will be predictably mediocre but, hey, this isn´t france!

Thanks everyone for your ongoing thoughts and prayers. God knows we need them as it is tough, really tough but having passed the halfway mark, it should all be downhill from now on (lol, O Cebreiro is coming up!).

With a little luck I´ll be arriving on the 9th September but if I need to rest more, it is more likely to be the 10th/11th October.

Thanks, GG for cutting and pasting. I find I´m just toooooo tired to post after having kept my sponsors up to date.

xxxx to all. Gemonimo

[Gardengirl]

Sweet and Gem,

You have so many thoughts and prayers behind you, willing you safe passage, and so much admiration too. It's lovely to have reports when you can manage them; you must get so weary!

Lots of luck for no more blisters, missing toenails, snoring companions or mediocre food!  [:D]

[suein56]

[quote user="gardengirl "]Sweet and Gem,

You have so many thoughts and prayers behind you, willing you safe passage, and so much admiration too. It's lovely to have reports when you can manage them; you must get so weary!

Lots of luck for no more blisters, missing toenails, snoring companions or mediocre food![/quote]

Precisely what I would have said ... if I could have found the right words. [:)]

So, thank you GG ... and best wishes to both our intrepid travellers for the remainder of their journey.

Sue

[Catalpa]

Do you both (Gem and S-17) hope to meet up to complete the walk or are there time constraints that mean you probably won't have chance? I do hope you can finish together - that would be perfect. [:)]

[mint]

Hola, one and all!

Gem, I am so thrilled to have your news.  Tonight I am in Carion so I am still at least half a day from the half way mark.

It´s all been flat today and indeed I could have walked a bit more but no sleeping accommodation for another 17.5 km which I deffo cannot do.

Anyway, should have gone to your convent except that I remain scared of nuns having been completely traumatised by them in childhood!

Got a nice, large brandy beside me to counteract the cold wind all during today´s walk.  As you say, all very flat but I don´t agree about the boring as I find everything completely fascinating....including the walk through industrial units to Burgos.  I wanted to see the factories and work out from the Spanish what they made and I like to study the way roads intersect with flyovers and underpasses and how they manage the curves so that vehicles don´t just come off them when driven at speed!  Yes, yes, perhaps I´m just sad, but nevermind.

Today, I nearly garotted myself!  Yes, it´s all true;  I was standing on a chair to put my washing on the line, then I stepped down without noticing another line at a lower level (I had on my reading glasses) and, of course, my weight broke this other line and I am left with a great big red welt on my neck.  The stigmata I can accept but a large red  mark right across my neck?  What kind of suffering is this????

Nevermind, I am still here and the cough is better and only one foot hurts so that´s a 50% reduction in pain and I´m going to eat a great big dinner soon and crash out with no fewer than 3 men in my bedroom of 4 beds!  Notice I said BEDS, not BUNKS!  Ah, the luxury and the indulgence of it all!

[Iceni]

[quote user="Gemonimo"]

With a little luck I´ll be arriving on the 9th September but if I need to rest more, it is more likely to be the 10th/11th October.

[/quote]

You mean we face another year of this thread?

John

[Gemonimo]

It´s the FATIGUE!

Sweets, take care of yourself! It´s when one is really tired that the acidents happen although mine was in the morning and if I were really honest, I´d confess that I had been distracted by a toned little rear end as it sailed by me on two wheels!

It would be great to meet up at Santiago if at all possible. A voir.

Right now I´m off to bed with my ear plugs ready to get up at 6.00am tomorrow to get to Hospital de Ortega by 2,00p.

Thanks, as usual to everyone for all your good wishes which certainly put wings on our feet (rather than blisters).

xxxx Gemonimo

[Gardengirl]

Sweet dreams, Gem and Sweet. It would be lovely to think of you both meeting up in Santiago! What tales you'll have to tell one another; what blisters you'll be able to compare! But maybe with scissors and 2 pairs of socks you won't have any more of those nasty red protuberances on the feet! There can't be many on here who have to take out second mortgages to pay the pharmacy bills!  [:D]

[Kitty]

What language are you speaking along the way?  Do you need much Spanish?  Does anyone speak French?  Is English widely spoken?

[mint]

Blisters?  What blisters?  Why they are nearly all gone!

But the Bugs are back big time:  I have so many nasty bites all around my waist, the back of my neck and along my jaw that everyone gasps in disbelief and relief that it´s not them when they see the bites!

What is it about me that the damned things so love?  As soon as I get to a big enough town to have a chemist, Í´m going to have to seek some advice before I end up in the Spanish Hospital for Fatal Bites from Insects.

Alas, it´s going to cost an arm and a leg as all these before- and after-bites things do.

The very large brandies I drink everyday about this time, however, are wonderfully cheap, typically about 1 euro 50 to 2 euros at most and they don´t use optics, just slosh it all into a large glass!

Cathy, yes, it´s mostly Spanish though in Navarre there were quite a few who speak French.  Hardly anyone speaks English and I have met but a handful of Brits on the Camino.  Lots and lots of other nationalities but the Quebecois speak with a really weird accent which I find nearly incomprehensible.  All the French people, however, tell me my French is excellent so I feel very proud to say I live in France!

[5-element]

Sweet - has it occurred to you that perhaps the beasties go for the very thing that you see as a remedy against their bites? They just LOVE the brandy in your blood!

[woolybanana]

Strange, I thought they spoke Navajo in that area?[6]

[pachapapa]

Map removed by Mods because of copyright. To view the map use the link below.

http://www.csj.org.uk/map.htm

The URL used in the moderated post above was...http://www.csj.org.uk/images/mapc.JPG.....connects to the same website.

The website keeps all its images in the dossier with URL....http://www.csj.org.uk/images/....there are quite a lot of images but the image files with the Camino Map are the following;

mapc.JPG                        13 Nov 05 16:28       185.4Kb
mapc.jpg                        24 Jun 05 07:15       185.4Kb

Both give the same image, only difference being the file extension in upper and lower case and the dates.

So two methods of producing the same image from the same parent dossier but one is not politically correct.[8-)]

[Russethouse]

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/777909/ShowPost.aspx

[Gardengirl]

Sweet, I thought of you a couple of mornings ago. I woke up with 5 bites just below my shoulder, where the nasties had obviously taken advantage of a good drink when my arm was out of bed. The temps are way down at night now, so I was very surprised. I thought at first it might be shingles, as they were in a sort of line, and we'd been talking to neighbours about shingles a day or two previously. But no - bites they were! And they were big and very itchy, despite taking a daily antihistamine tablet!  [:(]

Hope you get the bites sorted at your next pharmacy stop! Those brandies sound fabulous value, and if they stop you hearing snoring around you at night, you could recoup some of your bite outlay on doing advertising for them!  [:)]

[Iceni]

FWIW our doctor insists that the only ointment worth applying to insect bites/stings is Diprosone. It's prescription only here and no amount of begging and pleading on my part would shift the hard hearted women in the local pharmacy.

gg - the cure for bites in a neat line might be Frontline.

John

[Salty Sam]

If you can, get hold of some Tea Tree Oil and apply to the site of the bite as soon as you notice it.