Lady Kay Sings the Home Sickness Blues

Today mom said the words I never thought I'd hear from her: "I want to go home". It may have been at a very low, weak moment, but they were out there just the same, hanging in the Spanish air like the scent of smoking jamon.

After a nearly 19-mile hike, most of which was spent in midday heat despite the fact that we left at sunrise, mom and I were exhausted. Spent. Cranky. But looking forward to our first foray into the municipal Albergues of Spain (the Spanish equivalent of a French gite). That's when I heard it. The THUD. One of us had bit the dust, and it apparently wasn't me because I was still upright with two boots firmly planted on the ground. Mom had crashed hard. Hit her eyebrow on a rock. Destroyed her glasses (just yesterday one of the nose clamps had sprung off onto the bar table as my mother sat stone still - as if the poor dear had had it with the Camino and was falling apart at the seams). Gotten a black eye. And was so worried that she might have a concussion that she raced the rest of the way to Ruesta to beat any oncoming symptoms.

Happy to say, she was fine. But when she later realized her Reader had been destroyed in the fall and that she would no longer be able to relax and read quietly at the end of a hard day, she was distraught. (So was I - it was my Reader!) Looking over the pilgrim library and finding the only English book was a bodice-ripping romance novel didn't help things. Neither did a minor scuffle with an angry barmaid because mom and I didn't know the proper ordering etiquette nor the fact that we were sharing a tiny room with 6 grown men nor that this was a deserted town of old ruins with only an albergue and bar nestled amongst the aging spirits. So that's when, overwhelmed and upset, she let the homesick blues out of the bag.

With only a few days until we meet our friends, going home wasn't a real option. Nor was it what either of us actually wanted. But sometimes, even amongst sunlit stone ruins and the laughter-filled air of a bustling terrace full of pilgrims (one of whom was nice enough to lend me some muscle massage cream!), you get that feeling of longing for comfort, security, the familiar and a local library full of books written in English.

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iPhone pics from Puenta la Reina de Jaca to Ruesta:





We pass the 800 mark!






A part of the trail where pilgrims have made hundreds of rock columns. I made one myself! (After accidentally knocking over two trying to take pictures.)











Blue pebbles are left along the trail in protest of raising the water level in the Yesa Resevoir. The reservoir has already flooded over two ancient Camino trails and raising it would erase even more.


Bite-sized tourism office. Closed, of course.


Imposing Pilgrim in the Santa Cilia square. The men on the picnic bench to the right stared in wild wonder at the broad snapping pics.

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Location:Albergue Ruesta, Ruesta, Spain