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On 11 April this year, Rob and I flew to Spain to test the waters on a post-pandemic Camino as things started to open up again. Apart from a few extra layers of ‘Covid administrivia’, we found things remarkably normal. Having only just returned home on 25 May and wanting to get this into the June CC before it’s all hopelessly out of date, I decided to do a photo montage with captions to try and summarise our tentative steps into this brave new world!
Concluding a Camino where I had to make concessions to my ageing bones with shorter daily distances supplemented by the trusty Jacotrans backpack service and sometimes buses for me – which was upsetting but a Camino lesson in itself – I saw a carrier bag with the following words from Karen Blixen on it: The cure for everything is always salt water: sweat, tears or the sea. I used all three.
We only had our temperatures checked twice, and no kitchens were open for use by pilgrims, most albergues were still operating at half capacity and masks were absolutely compulsory on all public transport. Other than that, things were pretty much business as usual with a real sense of everyone being so grateful to have us there and us to be there.
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn” (chalkboard advice in a Mansilla café).
It was very special to hear the notes of the Processional ring out – Advance Australia Fair – in honour of our visit! This church has a chapel dedicated to Santa Rita de Cascia, patron saint of impossible causes, unhappy marriages, women’s ailments, abuse and mothers. She has a partial stigmata on her fore- head – a thorn – and it is said that on her deathbed she asked for some roses from the garden. Being midwinter, she was told there were none but she asked her visitors to look anyway and there, of course, was a large red rose, her symbol. On her saint’s day (22 May) the church is full of people with bunches of red roses.
Interflora delivers regular orders of red roses to place in her side chapel. However, the priest made a special request that all floral tributes for Santa Rita be donated in cash to wards support for Ukrainian refugees.
