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This is the continuation of the report from a long walk across Europe in 2003-4.
The first part of the report can be read on this link. The previous post can be read
here.Day 38We were kept awake much of last night by pilgrims playing guitar, but were cheered outside town when we saw a signpost declaring ‘Santiago – 825km’. It already sounds like an impressively long way, but I’m glad there’s no pointer for Istanbul.
After several more whitewashed villages, we climb up to the Alto de Perdon, a long ridge topped by a line of graceful wind turbines. At the top of the pass is a cut-out steel sculpture of a motley group of pilgrims, and a great view of Pamplona ahead, backed by further, higher hills.
Down the other side, fields of sunflowers bring us to Cizur Menor, a suburb of Pamplona, before the hostel opens at noon. Everyone around the streets is dressed all in white except for a red neckerchief tied round their waist- it’s like a uniform for
San Fermin. Thankfully there’s no queue of cow-bell sporting pilgrims here, so we head into a bar for a coffee while we wait. On the television (where again everyone is wearing the white outfits – I’m impressed), the seven days of continuous live coverage of the Great Fiesta is about to begin.
The scene in the centre of Pamplona looks amazing – almost a million identically-dressed people are crammed into the central square and surrounding streets, all jumping up and down, passing some unfortunate souls around above their heads – a sea of white and red. Even in the bar there’s an air of excitement building, so we have a beer and wait for the launch of the rocket that will signal the start of the fiesta. A deafening boom from the television, then the bar staff fire open bottles of sparkling wine and hand everyone in the bar a glass on the house.
We’re hoping to get a good night’s sleep before heading in for the fiesta tomorrow, so we eventually get away and check in to a lovely private hostel with hardwood bunks, beautiful gardens and a friendly owner, Maribel. She’s clearly excited about the start of the fiesta, though she has regrets at the international character of theencierro or running of the bulls these days.
“There are two many foreigners and backpackers come now. They try to reach out and touch the bulls. They don’t understand that the bulls are sacred to us”. This seems a bit rich, given that the bulls from each day’s encierro are killed in the bullfights that evening.
“Even some women run now,” she continues. “It’s not meant for women. It’s for young men to prove themselves. What do women have to prove?”
She sends us off for free swimming nearby, at a huge, five pool outdoor complex, and we have the Olympic-sized main pool almost to ourselves. On the streets, all are wearing the red and white outfits – since the rocket launch, the red neckerchiefs have been moved from waist and tied around the neck, and when we pop into another bar the tv coverage of mayhem is continuing – we too are getting very excited about tomorrow. I had been worried that it would be hard for a foreign couple to get into the spirit of the fiesta, but the atmosphere is so electric that already we’re buzzing.
Day 39We lie in as long as we can, until Maribel wakes everyone to come and watch the first encierro on her television. There’s an absolute throng of people all along the half mile of narrow city streets; it seems impossible that the bulls will even be able to get through. When the bulls are released and plough through the crowd it’s an incredible spectacle. Nearly everyone dives for the doorways and presumed safety towards the sides of the street, but there’s not enough room, particularly when the bulls skid round the tight corners, and at least one person looks to have been badly trampled. One brave Spaniard runs right in front of the horns for a hundred yards or more, before he is pulled away at the last moment by another runner. Maribel approves of this and is cheering and shouting out – afterwards, she says it was a good run. We hope to see tomorrow’s encierro for real – but I now know I dare not take part!
A short walk through parkland and past the pentagonal citadel walls that enclose central Pamplona, and we’re there. We call at one of hundreds of stalls to buy the obligatory red scarf and white t-shirt – no longer will we stand out – and plunge through the crowds. We hope to party until tomorrow morning, sleeping on the streets if need be, so there’s nothing for it but to join a huge queue for a left luggage office. In front of us, three young Californian backpackers keep me awake with their conversation, two hours of incessant but imaginative bull-shitting on their travel experiences. It makes me glad that we have our trek to provide a sense of purpose rather than being on the standard world backpackers tour. I can see we’re already too old for it and too interested in seeing the places themselves rather than in impressing our mates or trying to get laid.
Whilst we are waiting the official procession, with its ornately decorated bust of
San Fermin carried aloft, passes through a corner of the square. It halts whilst a lone female vocalist addresses it in haunting song. This procession has been carried out on the 7th July for at least seven hundred years. Once we’re rid of the bags, we battle through the streets to the cathedral in time to see the procession again for the ceremony outside the cathedral called the
atrio, buying a bottle of cava en route. As I open it the flying cork nearly takes my eye out and we begin drinking as the parade approaches.
Eight enormous giant figures, four metre high wooden structures with faces of made of painted paper mache, dressed in elegant clothing hiding their carriers below, lead the way. There are four pairs of Kings and Queens, representing Europe, America, Asia and Africa (poor Australia has never been added).
Also with giant old paper mache faces are the five
cabezudos or councillors, and the six
kilikis, villains of history such as Napolean who carry sponge balls on wooden sticks with which they attack any children (or adults) who cross their path. All line up in two rows, and when the cathedral bells ring out the bands begin to play and the giants dance. There are also the
zaldikos, half man, half horse, who also run around attacking children. Some kids are screaming with laughter as they are bashed over their heads, others burst into tears and have to be hugged by their attackers afterwards. One proud lad had his own mask and sponge stick and was chasing after all his mates.
As the parade moves away we venture round the streets, and our afternoon is filled with street-performers, jugglers, folk groups, and occasional
kiliki or
zaldiko attacks. The atmosphere is absolutely electric. Seemingly everywhere are the peñas, local brass bands with deafening drummers who charge around the streets, each with their own bands of followers adding to the anarchy. We have to settle down for a while, drinking our second bottle of bubbly as we listen to a great pop band on stage. In the next street, there’s traditional Basque dancing – it sounds like Medieval court music and the dances involve holding your arms motionless in the air whilst your legs go wild. It’s pretty impossible to do it from watching but hundreds of locals are on the move. The tempo is building all the time, and at ten o’clock the ‘fire bull’ is let loose. A man wearing a wooden frame in the shape of a bull runs through the streets at full pelt. The frame is covered in whirring, sparking Catherine wheels whilst rockets fire off the head in all directions. He runs past us and is lost in the crowd in seconds. I don't think he has heard of the firework code.
By now we’ve opened our third bottle of bubbly (this may sound excessive but it really was the cheapest drink!) and headed to the citadel walls for the fireworks display. I love fireworks but this display was the most spectacular we’ve seen, spellbinding as half the sky was lit in blinding explosions of colour. Some combinations are even arranged to draw giant, multicoloured smiling faces in the air, whilst hundreds of rockets shot up, exploded and fell in wonderful colours and when half way down reversed and flew up once more. I’ve seen nothing like it. It’s midnight, and it feels like things are only just beginning…..
Day 40Beyond the city walls a massive funfair has been set up. We wonder round the stomach-churning rides before opting for the big wheel – which still proves too terrifying for Helen - eyes tight shut!
We run round after a peña band for a while before heading to another park. There’s a giant stage and music but we’re hungry enough to instead devour what looks like a very dodgy paella from a street stall. The fiesta rolls on but the buzz is beginning to desert us as exhaustion begins to take hold – we’re utterly knackered. We try to sleep on a park bench, before deciding that the ‘soft’ concrete in the children’s play area will be more comfortable. I can’t sleep a wink, I’m too scared of being robbed (the Fiesta is notorious for pickpockets), not to mention the discomfort. We head onto another perch on some steps in the centre but the never ending bar activity and a guy on the next step vomiting up his entire fiesta consumption to this point are no improvement.
Finally we take up a prime position from which we’ll be able to watch the bull run – in three hours time. After only another half an hour our vantage point is crammed full of spectators, together with the balconies on all the buildings, whilst in the street just below the brave or foolish are gathering. They arrive loud and raucous but as time passes begin to look more nervous, sobering up rapidly as danger time draws near. The tension builds until with five minutes left the crowd turn to face towards the bulls, and begin chanting and waving their newspapers, their nerve at last returning with the solidarity in numbers.
An explosion is heard as a rocket flies into the air – the bulls have been released. Everyone turns to run, or to cram into the sides of the road, but the six bulls are here in an instant, menacing and black, with huge horns. They are running together as a pack and several people take glancing blows from their sides but they are past in just a second, followed by a group of steers with bells ringing out. In no time at all the adrenaline has gone; replaced by profound relief, as the runners dust themselves down looking dazed. Only later do we learn that further along the today’s run six people are hospitalised, three being gored and seriously injured. Since record-keeping began in 1924, thirteen people have been killed.
We go to collect our bags ready to move on, as the rubbish-strewn streets are swept and another day of the fiesta begins. We leave the centre past a tall statue of St. Francis: even the Saint is now adorned with the red scarf tied round his neck.
Once in the anonymous suburbs we stop for a civilised breakfast to kick-start our return to reality. There’s a hostel beyond the edge of the city but it’s too early to be open, and some energy is coming back into our limbs with the warming sun – in spite of twenty seven hours without sleep (and counting). A twenty kilometre walk passes in a trance; I remember only the heat and regretting eating the dodgy paella from the stall last night.
We stumble into the pilgrim hostel at Larrasoaña, only to be taken on an agonisingly thorough tour of the facilities by the warden. “These are the taps, this one’s hot water, this one’s cold…. That’s a toilet, which flushes like this...” Only when another pilgrim arrives do we escape, and crash out on the mattresses on the floor for a couple of hours.
When we wake, our host completes the tour by showing us his gallery, filled with photos and watercolour paintings by pilgrims, and every sort of camino memorabilia. He’s a true eccentric; so obsessed by the pilgrimage that he’s completed it seven times himself and even changed his name to Santiago. In several hostels on the route we’ve seen signed photos of a bearded man dressed in full medieval pilgrim costume, draped in scallop shells – there’s another of them here. As I glance at it I realise – it’s the warden with a pilgrimage-grown beard.
When we wonder outside we find that Larrasoaña is a picturesque village, but it’s best feature for now is a bar serving the meal I’d dreamed of – a huge, refreshing salad followed by steak and chips, after which we again leave the land of the living for the soundest night of sleep that has ever happened in a dormitory.
Day 41The arid plains of Spain seem to be behind us at last as we near the Pyrenees – today’s hike passes through beautiful beechwoods. The villages have changed too – Burguete is a cluster of whitewashed Alpine chalet-style houses with steeply pitched roofs to shed the snow.
Only a few miles on is the great monastery of Roncevalles. Its name was synonymous with the camino throughout the Middle Ages, providing assistance to pilgrims at their journeys’ crucial Pyrenean crossing. Yet it is even more famous as the setting for the great battle in the ‘Chanson de Roland’, the earliest of French epic poems.
Roland was a Frankish hero; a knight in Charlemagne’s army. The song relates how Charlemagne was fighting the Saracens in Navarra to defend the camino (another fib of history; actually Charlemagne was fighting the Basques to expand his own influence; the bones of St James hadn’t even been discovered at the time of the battle). News of trouble back in France caused Charlemagne to have to head back over the mountains to the north, leaving Roland and a small band to guard the pass at Roncevalles behind him. Roland’s band were attacked by an army of four hundred thousand Saracens; he fought heroically but even with his mighty sword Durandal he couldn’t beat them back. Instead, as his band were slain one by one, he was forced to sound his legendary horn to summon aid from Charlemagne. The ground shook, chimneys falling from houses and the birds from the trees. Charlemagne heard and turned back; but it was too late. The dying Roland tried to destroy Durandal to prevent it falling into enemy hands – he swung it into a great rock. But the sword was unbreakable and it was the rock split in two; instead Roland flung Durandal into a poisoned stream where it remains to this day. As a memorial, Charlemagne built a chapel, the beginnings of the monastery, on the site where the stone was split.
Today for thousands of pilgrims Roncevalles is the start of the journey. We have the stand in a queue to register for the dormitory with scores of people wearing shiny boots and brand new rucksacks, nervously contemplating their adventure. The place is organised with military regimentation, with everyone choosing one of two sittings for dinner in the hotel and issued with tickets for food and strict instructions on what time to go to sleep. We’re shown through to the vast stone hall which has been the dormitory for pilgrims for centuries, filled with hundreds of steel bunks; but at least these days there are hot showers in the basement beneath.
At the meal, we’re joined by a Swiss lady and two Spanish housewives who all started their journey yesterday at St John Pied-de-Port over the border in France. The Swiss lady is trying to learn Spanish with a pocket translation computer and has been practising all day on her two companions; for once, we manage to have a genuine conversation. We explain several times about the wine fountain near Estella but everyone assumes what we’re saying can't be right and must be lost in translation. The Swiss lady is shocked when, after we’ve all eaten huge platefuls of pasta, the second course of fresh local trout arrives – she thought the pasta was the main course. It’s a really enjoyable evening; the camino has been a superb easy introduction to our planned epic route, but we're keen to start some proper mountain-walking in the Pyrenees. I'm sure that, after all, we’ll miss the pilgrims once they’ve gone.
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