Camino Aragones Day 21: Sanguesa - Monreal

Le Chemin de Compostelle n'est pas le Club Med.

- Anonymous, posted in pilgrim hostel

You can say that again! To all those who say "enjoy your holiday" when I tell them I'm going on a Long Walk, I reply that that's not exactly what it is. (It's a holiday only in the sense that I'm doing something I'm not being paid to do.) And to all those who say "I'd love to do that, if only I could", I say: are you really sure about that?

Today has been one of those days that makes you wonder how the heck you got yourself into this. After a long night punctuated not only by the usual snoring but by rainstorms, thunder and something wooden creaking in the wind, my first thought upon waking was "what on earth am I doing here?"

After making our own breakfast we wrapped ourselves and our backpacks in plastic and set off in the driving rain. Our group split in two, as the other women in the group had decided to take the bus for the first five kilometres to shorten what promised to be a long day's walk in the rain. But they ended up taking a variant of the trail that was five kilometres longer, so in the end everyone walked the same distance!

The trail that Rodrigo, Marius and I took was completely soaked grass, mud or puddles wherever it wasn't simply a stream. Within minutes our boots were soaked right through, after which we didn't care any more and just slogged and skidded our way right through it all. It reminded me my first day on the Annandale Way in Scotland in September... but without the cow patties!

An encouraging message in a tunnel along the way

Visions of hot chocolate danced in my head by the time I reached Izco, a village alleged to have a café, but it turned out there was no such facility. By that time I really needed a break, but there was nowhere to go to get out of the rain. Marius had disappeared from view ahead of me and Rodrigo, who likes to set out before dawn, was most likely already in the pilgrim hostel in Monreal! I had no choice but to plod on. I reached the top end of the village and turned around to check whether the elusive café might be visible from that angle, only to see that the bright orange rain cover had blown off my backpack and was lying in the street below. As I hurried back down the hill to retrieve it, I spotted Marius, who had taken shelter in the garage of an abandoned house. I joined him and we ate the food we had brought with us. No hot drinks... I changed out of my soaking wet socks and put on the somewhat less wet ones that I had washed the night before, which had not quite dried in time for departure but were a considerable improvement nonetheless! 

After Izco we gave up on the soaking wet trail and took an abandoned old highway running parallel to the new motorway. This turned out to be the perfect solution, given the circumstances, and on the road we were reunited with our companions who had walked the other route. All of us were freezing cold, soaking wet, tired and disheartened, but the coincidence of running into each other like that gave us all a new boost and we managed to keep walking for the final ten kilometres into Monreal. We found the pilgrim hostel right next to the church, and I have never been so happy to see an open door!

Approaching Monreal on the old highway

Monreal turned out to be a rather more subdued town than the eponymous city in Canada, especially on a rainy afternoon, but it does have a café/bar, which is where we checked into the hostel, and a very talented church choir - which happens to hold its weekly rehearsal right next door to our hostel on a Friday night, and broke into the Hallelujah Chorus just as we were all getting ready for bed! 

Ce n'est pas le Club Med, non!