The secret gallery’s blog

For a while the Camino was our life really, we even had our two babies on it! Our daughter is a Navarica (born in Navarra). We were on one of our many  perfect land or house hunts by car. We were living in Finisterre, which really did feel like the end of the earth! We had just danced on O Cebreiro,( a well know climb into Galicia to any pilgrim) for the Summer Solstice then headed for the Pyrenees. As the needle sank lower into the red on the fuel gauge we pulled into the last filling station on the mountain road, the master of the pumps said the final word ‘cerado’ !  We decided to camp in the mountains near Roncesvalles instead of going all the way to St. Jean Pied du Port to start our camino from there.

James was putting up the tent while I made some smoked salmon pasta, just a couple of feet from where the pilgrims walk. Our puppy ‘Fudge’ was nervous of a large dog that came to have a look at what was going on! While in the camping cooking position I suddenly felt that things were a little different to normal, I was either loosing control or I was soon going to have a baby! We embraced and James opened me a can of non alcoholic beer for the car journey, kind of like a pub crawl without the pubs or the alcohol! It was late it was dark we were really unsure of where we were going to end up ! I sat forward, willing the car on almost pushing it! Freewheeling down the mountains we laughed and felt unnaturally calm! We passed a closed Ambulance depot, memorising emergency numbers for the 50km journey. People at last ! We pulled over and asked where the nearest petrol station was, vaguely understanding, more memorising needed! We went over the flyover and into a check point! Broken waters in broken Spanish got the message across, and as soon as the car rolled to a stop by the pump, we had an escort of the Gardia Civil.