Monasterio de San Salvador

Today was saved by a short excursion off the Camino to visit the Monasterio de San Salvador at Vilar das Donas, a hamlet a mile and a half north. The Camino itself lost its mojo rather badly. Ancient paths through canopied forests turned into drab trails along side new highways, with villages that were no better.
But the monastery was everything even the most medieval-mad romantic peregrino could ask for. Dating to the 10th Century, when it probably began as a “family monastery” belonging to a wealth Galician, who gave it to the Order of Santiago in 1184, the present structure was built in the 13th Century. Its post-Romanesque architecture is impressive enough, and other grace notes abound, such as large antique wrought-iron hinges on the doors. The monastery is best known for its burial effigies of early knights, however, and its 15th century frescoes, which are astonishingly well preserved.
I’d visited the monastery on my prior Camino trip, but found it closed. The outside is interesting, but a barred set of doors is always disappointing, however great the wrought-iron hinges and Romanesque doorway. Today the monastery was observing its posted opening hours, however, and I was able to peer at its frescoes, sculptures and architecture to my heart’s content and still leave a half-hour before its two o’clock lunchtime closing (nothing in northern Spain stays open all day). That allowed me, on my way back to the Camino, to tell a German couple who, like me, had walked up from the Camino that the monastery was open and would be for almost another half hour. They were so surprised and delighted that I thought they would literally dance up the hill over the brow of which the monastery looked out at the next valley.

The Saddest Story (with apologies to Ford Madox Ford)

Today we finished by walking across the new bridge to the new Portomarin, from which we could look down at the old Roman bridge and the ruins of old Portomarin, which have re-emerged after the reservoir which flooded the old town when the rio Miño was dammed in 1962 was allowed to drain.

The new town was built to include the old Romanesque church, every stone of which was moved block-by-block to its new location. That poses the metaphysical question whether a 12th Century church that has been moved a mile or so is still an old church, or merely a replica (I have much less trouble with the block-by-block reconstruction of a church in the same place where it collapsed, such as the Frauenkirche in Dresden).
But the more important problem is the new town was otherwise built with a monolithic architecture for its stores and bar-restaurantes, and a tract-housing style for its residential streets. Overall, the esthetic is high-end prison camp.
If I lived here, the only sadder thing I could imagine than living in this soulless town would be seeing my old town re-emerge from the water and mud so that I could look down every day and say, “There, those foundations on the riverbank fourth from the bridge are where I used to live.”
Apart from the downer presented by Portomarin, this was another day of walking ancient paths and quiet roads. The man in the picture owned a small herd of cows that walked down the Camino toward us this morning. A friend who had not yet amassed her quota of cows-coming-down-the-Camino pictures, took out her camera. The man gestured emphatically that it was more important for us to take a picture of him and his faithful shepherd dog. So we all did.

The old-trees-on-the-Camino pictures are, I know, hackneyed. But walking here is so timeless. I’m powerless to resist these photographic clichés.

Hi, I'm a foot!

The graffiti artist captures how we all feel in his drawing on the tunnel leading the Camino under the highway and into Samos. To wit, after 400-odd miles this month already, what better sums up our operative existence than a foot with a head, and nothing else. But note, it’s a smiling, happy foot.
Today I walked four miles longer than necessary to avoid the highway route and instead take the “alternative” Camino that leads to the Samos Monastery and then on to Sarria. The 5th Century Benedictine monastery burned in 1965, but has been rebuilt and still has its cloistered monks. Unfortunately, it was closed at 11:30 this morning, although the sign on the stout, locked oaken door said it was open from 10:30 to 12:30. But the monastery is more attractive from the outside, where the old walls still exist for the most part, than in the reconstructed interior (visited previously) which is notable chiefly for some of the worst murals ever painted.
The real point of the roundabout route, however, was to walk on the remote, ancient paths along the rio Ouribio, much diminished at this time of year but still contributing its share of burbling small rapids and waterfalls. The paths themselves are worn several feet deep into the ground, and bordered by either old chestnut trees or stone walls that look centuries old. It was an altogether humbling walk, thinking of the centuries of pilgrims and farmers and just plain walkers (and probably more than a brigand or two) who have gone the same way before.
There is, of course, the predictable unproductive debate as to which route is the “real” (that is, the medieval) Camino. Usually I’m willing to side with the highway route, as the most efficient way to get from Point A to Point B for pilgrims as well as today’s travelers. But I have trouble with the notion that medieval pilgrims skipped a huge, safe-haven monastery just to follow the most uninteresting straight line path. So on this one, I’m siding with my route.
Sarria is an uninspiring mid-sized city where I’m spending the night in a noxious chain business hotel (room smells like an ashtray, air-conditioning turned off by management although it’s almost 80, and they charge for using “their” internet). It marks the official beginning of the 100-kilometer count-down to Santiago de Compestela. That’s the minimum distance necessary for a pilgrim to earn a partial forgiveness of sins (except in years when St. James’ birthday falls on Sunday, such as 2010, when the slate is wiped clean). For those of us who have walked all the way from the French border, 100-kilometers seems like an absurdly short “pilgrimage.”