July and August here have both challenges and delights. Pilgrims once confined to a narrow corridor through the old town now spill into every building that someone can convert into an albergue.
Blocks of flats which stand partly empty through the winter months are full to bursting with city escapees who bought them for peanuts as second homes in the years before the Camino was so popular. The car-parks are inadequate and streets become blocked with cars who have failed to park. The shops have queues and the bars charge half as much again for a coffee.
There is compensation. Live music, parades of classic motors and motorbikes, fiestas of every kind. Last weekend a Blues festival with bands in the streets and concerts in the parks. This weekend there is comedy, and next week magic with magicians from all over Europe.
Families fill the town park, probably driven from the overheated flats and the terraces are full. We went to look at the classic cars which filled the square and struggled to find a seat in the shade to eat our ice cream. Those who tried the unshaded seats soon moved as they burned their legs and bottoms on the metal frames or stone bases of the benches.
When we found somewhere, I couldn’t help but watch the family sat opposite us. There were six of them, parents and four children, all crammed onto the seat. Each one of them had a mobile phone, including the toddler perched on Mum’s knee. In the half hour we sat there, not one looked up, or spoke. I wanted so much to learn what held their attention so completely. As we left and wandered off to find the music, and I wondered if they had set alarms to remind them to go for lunch.
I didn’t blame them because they looked as content as you can be on a hot summer Sunday.
On both Monday and Tuesday, the unusually high temperatures encouraged everyone outdoors. Perhaps to discover a shady spot beside the river or the local reservoir, where at least you could go in the water to keep cool.
In the end, we did both, abandoning any pretence of work. As it was our first visit to the reservoir this summer, and I was afraid there would be no water. I needn’t have worried, the amount of water surprised me. As you can see from the photo, it’s plenty for a swim. Although the shady spot amongst the trees where we put our chairs was a long way from the, much reduced lake.
For a long time, I hesitated, thinking of my comfy chair and the book I had with me and telling myself that I had swum in the river only yesterday.
The heat drove me to the water in the end. I planned to sit in the shallows to cool off, but when I arrived, the shallow edges were as warm as a bath and the cooler deep center became irresistible. I pushed myself off and swam out beyond the skeletons of trees that had drowned when the valley was flooded.
At once, I was glad that I had. Water dampens sound and the noise from the families on the shore faded to nothing. Here I was, quiet and alone with the fish and the dragonflies as company. These days I swim slowly and leave time to gaze at my surroundings, watching fishermen in the distance cast their lines and draw them back to the shore. And in time, my mind separated from the action of swimming and the next scenes for my book, which had eluded me the day before, came into focus.
I altered my course not wanting to go out too far, not because I was afraid of drowning but because the fire planes use the lake to pick up water in huge buckets and I didn’t was to find myself scooped into the air. I swam instead toward the river, hoping to encounter a current that ran cold, but I never did.
There was little incentive to get out. I’m not a speed merchant, and the heat was more tiring than the swim. But I knew that at some point in the afternoon Steve would wonder if I was OK, so I meandered back. Sometimes, just hanging silently in the current and letting the fish come to investigate and watching the buzzards hang over the valley.
The trend is to call it wild swimming, which makes it something it’s never been in my experience. It’s so much calmer than the local pool. There is no need to race or to dodge teens playing games. It feels considerably more civilised, but then I suppose we put our own definitions on those words, and I am old enough to be comfortably out of fashion.
Later, but on the same theme, I wondered if the hour or two I sent on my deckchair reading among the trees qualified as forest bathing. After all, I was still wearing my swimming costume. If it does, maybe I’m more fashionable than I thought.
Abigail Thorne 