This was a strange day on my virtual camino and I’m still not sure how to process it. Firstly, after months of cooking every main meal from scratch for three adults I decided to order up a lockdown take away from our favourite vegetarian brunch cafe that we were no longer able to patronise in the usual way. It was to be a real treat, a mega bean and mushroom burger with slaw, skin on fries and chilli on the side.

The idea was to go for a walk on the moor before dropping down to a town in the valley at our appointed pick up slot. My companions had fixated on the burger idea without really buying in to the pre takeaway walk. One of them had forgotten to wear proper footwear and had slipped on a pair of old flip-flops that were actually mine and did not properly fit her. The other companion was convinced that we had to head back to the car and drive to our burger collection point after about 10 minutes of walking. I knew we would be very early if we did this, but no-one was listening to me. We ended up sitting for over twenty minutes in a car park, waiting for our food to be ready for us, like we had not eaten properly for a week. In fact I had cooked a hearty vegetable, lentil and butterbean soup for lunch which we had eaten with bread and cheese about four hours previously. Food. It has become extremely important recently. Fortunately I had cycled so much earlier in the day that I did not need extra moorland miles to reach my Camino destination.

It was windy and quite cold up on the top, but warm and sunny in the valley. As we drove into the town centre, I saw a group of people not all of whom were bothering to distance themselves socially. A woman stood in the centre holding a banner which read This is not a Moment This is a Movement.

I realised that it was a gathering of people in support of the Black Lives Matter marches that are taking place in many cities. Naturally it was not possible to travel to an urban centre and join in a march with a larger group of people. This was just a small town in the West Country, so although it was a modest turn out, I guess it was to their credit that they had managed to organise anything at all. Everyone appeared to be well fed and healthy. Everyone was white. Some had chosen to wear black clothes. There were no police in sight.

Leaving my companions to their car park vigil, I slipped out to see what was going on at closer quarters. Some were taking it in turns to make what they described as pledges which seemed to be promises to behave differently or to do something constructive to eradicate institutionalised racism. Others made more general, emotional speeches about injustice. There were sporadic bursts of applause. I struggled to get my head around the disconnect between the environment of the wide empty moorland I had just left and the sunny domestication all around me. It was not that I disagreed with anything they were saying. I agreed with everything that I heard being spoken. It was just so odd to hear it all being enacted in that place, on that day, in that context and I am not sure why. I was not sure who they thought they might be talking to who did not already agree with them.

How did they hope that what I was witnessing in that moment could be extended to become a movement? I could not imagine how anyone there might have experienced racial discrimination personally. So, for a moment, it felt like it sometimes feels when the media talk about the dreadful impact of the virus, like it is being played out elsewhere, with other people who are strangers to me and so only indirectly relevant to my life. Believing in the coronavirus, if you live in Devon, is an act of faith. You know it is out there, like everyday racism, but you have to take other peoples’ word for it, because you live in a completely disconnected, little white world.

But in the teeth of this pandemic there are terrible collisions between the narratives around susceptibility to covid, ethnicity and social deprivation. It is therefore darkly, poetically and desperately tragic that George Floyd’s death by asphyxiation should mirror the way a coronavirus victim typically dies. This idea is now hooked up in our collective imaginations and it is terrifying. So maybe I should not be unsettled by the small town protest. Everyone, including me, in that gathering is culpable, everyone is susceptible and we do need to say it out loud.

If it was not for Elke I would have missed the horse in a zebra coat, peacefully grazing at the top of a field. But it was me who spotted the train in a tree. It was a small toy carriage, placed into a fold near the base of the trunk. It is just visible, as a splash of bright green, if you expand the photograph. We guessed it had been deliberately placed there to add interest to a child’s daily walk, or perhaps was a clue in a scavenger hunt. Whatever the reason for placing it there, it obviously needed to be left alone.

Through a combination of pedalling for two 20 minute sessions, added to the distance we covered during this walk, I managed to travel the 17km to Casazorrina. For lunch we had a picnic on a bench in the middle of a field overlooking wooded hilltops. I had bought falafel wraps in a supermarket and it felt really odd to be so wary of the packaging and its potential for carrying the virus, in such a rural idyll, completely devoid of other people. I sanitised my hands, unwrapped the food, sanitised my hands again, ate the food. What a palaver.

It is going to take a long time to get to San Salvador. I am aiming for another 13km tomorrow, which includes the few kilometres we need to walk to get to Salas. After wandering around the town for a bit, we will tackle the uphill section to La Espina where there will be somewhere to buy coffee and a peaceful hostel called the El Texu. Sometimes guitar playing monks call by. We may be lucky.

We are setting out today on a beautiful section of the Camino, with many hills and forest views. The aim is to reach Casazorrina which is approximately 16kms away. Here we will treat ourselves to a stay at La Figal de Xugabolas, to compensate for the nights spent in a ditch at the side of the road endured by some members of our party.

I will be cycling and walking, hoping that the cooler temperatures will keep the crowds at home.

One of the good things about walking a Camino, I heard somewhere, probably on the telly, is the opportunity to reflect. The quiet pace of the walk becomes meditative and if there was ever a time to do some soul searching it has to be now. The image below was taken last year, not today, but I am not sure it matters really. What matters is that I looked at it again today and looked at it differently.

That building, for instance, with its domestic structure and scale, looks so vulnerable, so perilously close to the overspill from the dam as it is gradually released. What we had to do as we walked right up to the weirdly compelling patterns in the falling water and climbed the hill to see the vast expanse of pent up water behind it, was trust a whole heap of invisible experts. But the scene does not inspire me with particular confidence. That road for example, it is not exactly well-maintained, is it? Emergency vehicles might struggle to get by in a hurry. Not that they could do a lot when they got there. This image of a walk uphill to the dam felt to me today like a pretty good metaphor for our times.

It also occurred to me today, as I pedalled in the rain, was that the reason I keep the spooky, dementor scarecrow standing as a sentinel, even though it fails to guard my peppers and courgettes, is because it is another kind of memento. Beyond the green and pleasant corner of the county I am lucky to live in there is pestilence and terrible injustice. When I am lulled into a false sense of security by the beauty of my small world and my many privileges, this scarecrow pulls me back. Where we all actually live is in the house at the foot of the dam.

There has been a change in the weather and a few drops of welcome rain, but probably too light to be useful. Today we have a short, very steep uphill section to San Juan de Villapañada. There are no shops in the village and so we will have to carry our own food with us to cook in the hostel kitchen. So before we leave we will stock up on cheese and cider from the market in Grado, which fortunately is held mid week on Wednesdays. Because our packs will be heavy and the track steep we will only be walking 5kms today and rest up before our longer journey tomorrow.

An early start today so I could get some pedalling done while it was still relatively cool and shady. The scarecrow never fails to startle me when I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye but robins happily perch on its shoulder. I am not really sure if its point anymore, hanging about like a dementor.

It is only as I write this down that I notice for the first time how de-mentor reads like the inverse of to mentor or teach, so it is a creature that is the dark opposite of the best of the Hogwart professors. I am not sure what it is unteaching me. But I manage anyway to pedal and walk all the way to Grado.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will take a look around the farmer’s market before going on our way

So we are waking up to another fair morning, but a change in the weather is on the way. I ordered my first piece clothing for many months in preparation for this journey. The low crotch harem pants looked stylish and comfortable on the willowy nineteen year old in the photographs, but unfortunately change my bodily profile to that of an inquisitive hamster. Before setting out today I will take another unusual step, onto the scales in the bathroom. I am braced for many acquired covid kilos to be revealed in the process but am not so silly as to set an actual target to get rid of these during our virtual Camino. If I manage to lose some of them it will be a bonus.

Today we will be travelling through the Asturias region, famous for its beautiful forests, mountain scenery, cheese and cider. See you in Grado!

Well we made it! It’s lovely here isn’t it? It was tough going in the heat. I personally found the last uphill section especially hard, repeatedly walking up to the top of the garden and down again with my watering can. I now have no water AT ALL in two of my three water butts. The weather is due to cool down a bit on Wednesday, which should make it easier to keep on pedalling, walking and, in Elke’s case, dancing. But there is only just the ghost of a chance of rain. Fingers crossed. The garden is as parched as me.

Tomorrow we will head for Grado, a sizeable town and about the same distance away, 13 ish kms/ 7 or so miles.

I am going to try to add Adelle to this site to allow her to enter her own images and texts. Anyone else who would like me to do this for them, just let me know. Wish me luck.

Sleep well. Get lots of rest. I’m hoping the owls keep their beaks shut

This is Grandad’s multi seed loaf he baked today to give him energy for the journey. It looks pretty tasty even if, as he confessed, he arranged the nicest side to face the camera

Everyone is experiencing trouble with technology today, so I am fully expecting the data to be massaged. Elke’s phone does not work with any step counting app. My phone’s step counter is telling me that I have not moved since last Thursday. Adelle has decided to make the journey via ‘vigorous typing’ as she has moved less than a kilometre in nearly five hours. Sounds like an excellent plan.