A THOROUGHLY DECENT CHAP

It had been a long day, starting at Sahagun and taking the scenic route via Calzadilla to Reliegos, just 20 kilometres short of Leon. I was really hungry so booked a seat at a restaurant doing pilgrim menus at 7 o’clock. Showered and briefly rested I presented myself bang on 7 to find that there were no empty tables but, as is the way on the Camino, I was waved over enthusiastically by someone who I subsequently established was British and called Martin and invited to join him at his table.

Martin was from somewhere near Guildford and that, it transpired, presented Martin with something of a dilemma - a dilemma which he was keen to share with me the moment I sat down. “I’d been planning my return and couldn’t make my mind up how to get from Gatwick airport to home”. The choice was around whether his wife should pick him up from the airport, risking potential delays on the M25, or whether he should take the train to Guildford and meet his wife there. You might think that it would be quite difficult to stretch such a monologue out for more than a minute or so but Martin had, it seemed, developed the art of entertaining himself with the minutiae of the apparently unimportant. My order had been taken and the first course, mixed salad as per usual, had been all but finished when Martin delivered the coup de grace – Easyjet flights to Gatwick were stopping at the end of October so he wouldn’t be able to fly there after all. He was about to launch into an analysis of his remaining options when, to my relief, two young people were at the door of the restaurant looking for somewhere to sit.

Adam was from Hungary and Julianna from Switzerland. They looked about twelve to me but one thing was clear – they were in the first throws of love. They were just besotted with each other. But Martin was not be deterred and ploughed on and on about his travel plans and the dilemmas he faced.

I was now reaching exhaustion from this empty chatter and wanted to leave Adam and Julianna to enjoy just a bit of time to themselves. So, looking straight at Martin, I said that it had been a long day and it was time to leave Adam and Julianna. I stood up, finished my glass of Rioja, but, big mistake, left some wine in the decanter, and waited for Martin to join me. “Oh” he said “if you’re off I’ll just finish this then”, helping himself to the Rijoa. I turned when I got to the door to see Martin regaling the lovers with some tale in which they clearly had not a jot of interest. But they seemed happy enough just to be together.

It was five days later when I was walking through the outskirts of Ponferrada that I spotted Martin again. It seemed he was acting as some sort of tour guide to a group of five or six travellers, rattling on about some local dignitary from thedistant annals of time. I smiled to myself as I slid past, so I thought, unnoticed. No such luck. I was maybe ten yards onwhen I heard Martin shout out “Alastair. Hold on”. I looked back and there was Martin literally running after me, backpack bouncing crazily on his shoulders, his discourse cut short in mid tale. It was unclear whether his guide group was disappointed or relieved.

“Am I pleased to see you” he confided in me. “That group – far too slow”. With that he adjusted his step to meet mine and we were a walking pair. Martin clearly found silence a problem as before I could draw breath he started to update me with his revised travel plans. I let my mind drift with the cadence of my steps and my breathing and was soon connected with the earth, the sky and all in between. HoweverI was awakened by a sudden cessation of Martin’s patter and realised that Martin was looking at me clearly expecting a response to a question of which I had no recollection. “I’m sorry – what did you say?” “What are you travel plans back to the UK?” he asked fervently. Before I knew it I uttered two words in the same sentence which I realised instantly was a massive error. These words were Easyjet and Ryanair. They were seized upon by Martin with alacrity – this was his special subject. I groaned inwardly as he accelerated into what appeared to be a well rehearsed diatribe on the relative merits of each airline.

I know it may, looking back, seem cruel but I had to devise an escape plan. We were approaching a village where there was bound to be a bar so I asked the question “Do you plan on stopping for some lunch?” Whichever way he answered I would opt for the other. “No. I think I’ll walk on”. Soon enough there was a quiet bar, with a young Canadian I’d met the previous day sitting outside. I sat down expecting Martin to wave as he walked on. But he sat in the shade opposite the café looking anxiously back up the road. I was nearly through my beer when Martin suddenly stood up, beaming. A walker appeared and Martin, without a pause, slipped in beside them and headed off out of the village. Of course the monologue had started…………..

The last time I was with Martin was at the albegue Casa Suzy in the mountain village of Trabadelo. I’d spent a glorious morning taking an alternative mountain route out of Villafranca del Bierzo through woodland full of chesnut trees whose ripe fruit littered the ground underfoot. As the day was sunny, I had opted for an early stop so that I could wash my clothes and hope to have them dried by evening. All was looking good, clothes hung out to dry and sitting in the late afternoon sunshine enjoying a quiet beer with a couple of other travellers. Suddenly Martin appeared, sat down with his beer, and for a short time the quiet was only disturbed by the rushing of the nearby mountain stream. But not for long. When one of the group stood up to check their clothes hanging over a fence, Martin chose to educate us all on the most efficient way to manage clothes washing whilst on the Camino. This involved going into the shower every night, fully clothed, and washing each garment in turn until he was finally naked with his now washed and rinsed clothes on the floor at his feet. He spared us no detail. It was a tour de force. His audience sat in a stunned silence. All I could think of was the cold shower that I had just endured, doubtless due to Martin’s machinations in the shower.

A week later I thought I heard Martin in a bar in Santiago as the words “Heathrow” and “Gatwick” were articulated with an unmistakeable enthusiasm. I passed by.