Today, we would have been on the way – on the way to Spain to walk the way, the camino de Santiago. Easter Week or Semana Santa was when we went to Spain to have a few days together as a family. We tried the beach one year, and when that was quite miserable, we tried it for another year, and when that was miserable again, we tried – something else… Someone in the family is a specialist on the ‘camino’ or rather the ‘caminos’, all of which lead to Santiago. We knew we couldn’t do this in one ‘go’. Just close your eyes. Imagine what this would have been like. Yes, you’re right. It just would not have worked. So we took it in stages. No more beaches, and 3-days of walking through the campos de Castilla instead. We picked ‘el camino del sur’ and started from Salamanca, our favourite spanish city, for obvious reasons. So for the past few years we walked a few days. And you know what? It was brilliant. We stayed in Albergues (basic but really cheap at €3 a head), had three course dinners with drinks for 8 euro each, and had time to be on our own as well as time to talk when we wanted. To be honest, I had a lot of time on my own, not because I wanted to but because for some stupid reason, my boots never worked out well for me. I was always find on the first day, limping on the second, and barely able to walk on the third, trying hard to keep the pace. Pádraig was always happy to join, until the day before the flight when really really important things started to happen which he always just about managed to sort out in time to come along. How happy we were.

Of course, we never quite made it to Santiago. It would have taken us another three or four years. At least.

But one thing I learnt during these walks was that as long as you keep going (even limping along) you’re fine. You’ll get wherever you wanted to get that day. As long as you kept going. Pádraig being Pádraig, there even was a day he got there ahead of the rest of us because a Spanish lady, mother of a large family living in a tiny village in the middle of Castille, on a Sunday at lunch time, ordered her son to give Pádraig a lift to the next village. The son wasn’t too enthusiastic at first, and Pádraig, to be fair, tried to back off out of this kind of difficult situation, but the mother insisted. El pobre hijo con todo el peso en sus hombros… ¡claro que había que llevarle! Ningún problema. Con gusto. ¡¡¡Besos y abrazos!!! The rest of us just kept walking, and we caught up with Pádraig in the first ‘Bar’ of the next village where he had managed to be offered the exceptionally economic menú del día. Recognize anything?

Talking about walking… Here is the last image from the snámh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a nice front page! Haven’t seen the paper yet, but Caoimhe NíMhuilleoir will have her ‘snámh diaries’ published on pages 4 and 5 of Seachtain tomorrow!

Back to the walk – or run: A brief reminder that if you want to join a group of women running the Flora Mini Marathon for Pádraig, you will have to register for the event by this coming Friday. Click here to go to the event page and register.

One of the really nice nurses looking after Pádraig today tried out something really exciting: she brought in an apple and an orange. We took a slice from the apple and rubbed it on his tongue and his lips. It as amazing to see how curious he was to find out what this item around his mouth was, how he touched  it with his tongue when we asked him to do so. – The ‘experiment’ with the orange was even more exciting: when we held a piece of orange close to his nose, we could clearly see his nostrils picking up the really nice smell from the orange. I am sure this was as exciting for him as i was for us.

Today’s German Music Tip
Cochise, Rauchzeichen. Anfang der 80er live in the “Auslandsshow” on German TV. Not sure how good your German is but even if you understand little you’ll realize how nothing has changed over the decades – I love the comments people posted …

Werdet ihr erst dann einseh’n, dass Ihr Euer schönes Geld auf der Bank nicht essen könnt, welch’ Menge ihr auch nennt?

Check out the lyrics by Ape, Beck and Brinkmann here.

What’s hot
We
What’s cold
I

The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Rauchzeichen

Twitter: @forPadraig
http://www.caringforPadraig.org