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Published: April 8th 2009
Day 7
Saturday 4th April After a rationed breakfast consisting of three quarters of a boiled egg and one quarter of a mandarin each, we continued on down the hill for the 10km stint into the town of Markina. The last few kilometers were terrible, being on a slippery, steep goat track, and no good for sore knees.
We finally made it into town at about midday where we immediately made our way to the nearest food outlet where we gorged ourselves on tapas! Was very nice to have full bellies again! Before making our way out of town, we bought more supplies from the nearest supermarket - just to be safe!
On we went, following the road to Bilibar instead of the suggested route as our knees just couldn't face another goat track through the hills when there was a perfectly good road down below. In Bilibar we were greeted by a gorgeous shaggy dog, which continued to follow us through town and up the hill to the monastery Ziortza, our rest point for the night.
The monastery, the Collegiate Church of Ziortza, was
founded in the 11th century and is managed by trappist monks. They provide weary pilgrims with a bed and a meal and a good shower, and all they ask is a donation from those who are able to give.
With us the room was at full capacity, with a varied group of pilgrims including a German mother and son, and French couple on their 5th Camino, and a Spanish doctor (who we later learned was quite a proficient snorer... oh the joys of sleeping in dormitories..)
Tristian, the German son, had a great book outlining each stage of the Camino and we were so excited to see that the hills become much much less crazy after the city of Bilbao, which is only 3 more days walk away, with only one hill being over 200m high, and the rest only hitting the 100m mark all the way to Santiago!! So, this was very positive news after yet another painfully hard
18km day. A fantastic shower also helped to boost our spirits, especially considering it was the first for me in 4 days....
At 7.30pm we all filed into the
cathedral to watch the prayer service being led by the monks. It was mainly singing, and all in Spanish, so I had no idea what was being said, but if was definitely beautiful, and an experience I wasn't expecting.
Dinner was served to us at 9pm. We weren't expecting anything much as Ben and Lauren's last experience with food from monasteries involved a bowl of watery onion soup. Nor did we mind - a roof over our head and a warm shower was fantastic enough. So we were very pleasantly surprised, and our bellies very content, after being presented with a lovely pea and ham type soup, and then a chicken and tomato spaghetti. Teamed with 2 baguettes we contributed, and a block of chocolate from the German mum, we all were a very satisfied bunch of pilgrims as conversation flowed around the table in four languages!
Off to bed by about 10pm for a fantastic sleep (well when we weren't awake listening to ole Espanole dude snore the roof down....)
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