DAY 23 – SATURDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER 2019 – SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTA

After meeting so many ‘perigrinos’ who’d completed the full 8oo kms I was feeling distinctly inadequate and debated whether I should even bother queuing up with the hordes just to get a stamp in my Camino book and a flashy piece of paper! In the end I decided to go just to experience the procedure and I think secretly I did want a little recognition for my modest achievement! So I duly arrived just after 7.45am and already there was a long queue snaking back along the cobbled street next to the Camino office. The office opened at 8am and the line of humanity began to move reasonably quickly. Well this might not be so bad after all, I thought, but I soon discovered this was just a queue to obtain a numbered ticket (253 in my case!) which entitled me to join another queue and wait to be called forward when your number came up on the TV monitor above the main entrance to the hall where the Camino stamping was done. I hung around for a while but when I saw how painfully slow this secondary queue was moving, I decided to go for a walk and grab a coffee. After around an hour I returned to see they’d only just moved above the hundred mark, so this time I disappeared for around three quarters of an hour. When I returned this time, they were suddenly at number 250! Phew, just in time, I would have hated to have missed my slot as I’d now been hanging around for well over 3 and a half hours! The lady behind the counter duly inspected my stamped book to make sure all was in order, asked me whether I’d completed the Camino for religious, spiritual or recreational reasons. When I said the latter, she sounded disappointed asking if I hadn’t done it at least for spiritual reasons as well. She duly stamped my Camino passport and I was ushered towards a miserable man at a nearby desk flogging protective bog roll tubes for 2 Euros a pop, to protect your hard-earned certificate from becoming creased. I later found out the sudden acceleration in turnover of perigrinos was because more Camino stampers are drafted in as the morning goes on, hence my reason for nearly missing my slot!

I spent the afternoon just wandering around the old city streets, finally ending up in the square near my hotel where there was a live band playing popular songs in a kind of relaxing jazz style. So I settled down in the lovely warm sun, eating a few bits and bobs I’d bought from the nearby supermarket and listening to some lovely chilled out music.

In the evening I strolled up to a sports bar near my hotel as one of the biggest matches in the Spanish league was being played, Atletico Madrid versus Real Madrid. I secured a prime seat and enjoyed a couple of beers with generous amounts of tapas thrown in. It’s just a shame the game wasn’t particularly entertaining, finishing 0 – 0.