Day 26: León to Astorga to Santa Catalina de Somoza on The Feast Day of Saint James
My left ankle is unrecognizable as an ankle. I keep waiting for Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character to kill the alien thing emerging from my left ankle bone. My right knee is working on sympathy pains. Bottom line…I’m dragging my limbs. Hard to call this walking. 
Andrew made another executive decision for his stubborn, never-say-die wife. We are bussing to Astorga! It will save us a day and a half of walking, and my knee.
Astorga is a topic of conversation along the Camino. On April 5th, a Chinese-American pilgrim disappeared after attending mass in Astorga. She has not yet been found, and pilgrims are advised to be aware of their surroundings (always good advice). We have been told to travel with a partner or within shouting distance of others. The missing pilgrim’s picture is up at the Astorga bus terminal and at random stores. The pictures of Denise Thiem are reminders that the Camino, though generally safe, is a microcosm of any community anywhere, and dangers exist. 
When we pulled into Astorga, the locals were setting up for the second last day of a week long Fiesta de Astures and Romanos. Outside the massive stone walls surrounding the city sat thatch-roof huts. Locals dressed as peasants, and displayed weaving, leather tanning, and iron work of the time. Below them sat the Romans. Better housing, better clothes, more colour and precious metals, more arrogance. And, though they were playing roles, the “Romans” clearly felt superior to the “peasants”. (Until the Roman steps out for a quick café con leche and is overheard saying to the señoritas how silly he feels in his short tunic. A little Spanish goes a long way!)
Three priests officiated at the mass in the great cathedral, perhaps because it was Santiago’s Feast Day. The Astorga cathedral is far more beautiful on the outside than the one in Burgos, León, and Santiago, in my humble opinion. I’m not sure what it is about the architecture that lifts my heart and eyes and spirit skywards. It speaks to divinity and beauty through artistic architecture that doesn’t gag me in ways that other majestic cathedrals do. Other cathedrals are about the “Oooh, look at me!” instead of “Look at God and loveliness through me!” And now I’ll quit, because I clearly don’t know how to talk about cathedrals, art, or architecture. I’m glad WordPress has an edit/delete feature!
When we gave the Sign of Peace during mass, Andrew and I reached simultaneously for an elderly nun’s hand. It was a lovely awkward moment. When mass ended, she pressed two gold Miraculous Mary charms into my hand, and motioned that one was for Andrew. We wear them still. Andrew remembered the Italian girl who gave us Miraculous Mary medals on the road to Santiago in 2013. It helped me then, and I’m hoping Mary will help me now.
The walk into Santa Catalina de Somoza was fairly easy. A man making jewellery sat next to a medieval fountain, so I donated the crystal charms from my busted anklet to be used in his future projects. The next town we passed through offered little more than three bars, and only one was open. So Andrew ran ahead to grab a table with Agnes from Scotland and her partner, while I watched a local on a scooter pull behind a car and urinate against a wall in full view of me. He never left the scooter. And the Shit Head was more concerned that Andrew might see him marking his territory than he was worried that I did see him. After watering the wall, he scooted to his friends seated across from the bar we drank at. Would they have offered him a toilet if he’d waited the thirty seconds or twenty metres it took to scoot there? 
Not too far down the dirt road we came in to Santa Catalina de Somoza and the promise of two nice albergues. Old men handed out pamphlets advertising “the best” albergue in the pueblo, but we stayed at the first one we crossed. It sat near the wall of an abandoned church topped by an abandoned stork’s nest. 
I felt out of whack by lights out. The bus, the trip back to Medieval Astorga, the reminder that a pilgrim had gone missing several weeks earlier, the Urinator, and each painful step along the Way made it difficult to join the many dots from León to Santa Catalina. I had lost my pilgrim mojo. I worried about the 18-year-old German girl who shared our room. Nearly my daughter’s age. Invincible. She would travel alone in the morning along a road that had lost its innocence. My Camino was suddenly tinged with real-life concerns I was happier leaving behind. 
¡Ultreia!
~Penny