Walking through anger on Pilgrimage

I'm so cross I set off at a lick, thumping my poles down hard on their rubber tips, taking my anger out on the tarmac. I have just waited half an hour for the worst breakfast of the camino to be delivered to the wrong table where it quickly went cold in the cool morning air. Overpriced and inadequate, I have now wasted a further 22 minutes queuing to pay the harried waiter. He's spinning from coffee machine to kitchen to till while the tables mound with uncleared pots and resigned pilgrims snaking to the doorway sigh, needing their caffeine fix before heading up trail to Olveiroa from whence I have come. I should have been on the road 40 minutes ago with a tough 25km distance to defeat today, heat rising already... I have had enough. I tot up what I've eaten, check my waist pouch for euros and head inside to the bar, waving at the waiter to indicate I have left the cash on the counter.

Cash I now need because as I stop at a roadside bakery to buy lunch- there was no supermarket or ATM in Olveiroa- I discover that they have no card machine. These goodies will not be good to go. Tasty morsels still behind glass, I forlornly trudge on to the next town.

I am still cross with the waiter. Cross with the cafe owner rinsing (overcharging- a word my son taught me I feel appropriate for this situation!) pilgrims and leaving staff inadequately supported for the morning rush. I am cross with myself for not noticing the app only showed a cafe sign, not a grocery store. Cross I didn't stock up last night even though I didn't have access to a fridge, and ensure I had more euros to get me through the rural areas where pilgrim oases may not have card machines or apply high minimum spends. So cross, I have pulled my hat down and been clacking past my fellow pilgrims with a nod, instead of my usual cheery Buen Caminos and occasional chat.

And now I decide... enough being cross. This is my day, a beautiful sunny 24 degrees in green Galicia and I will not waste a moment more in negative emotion. I have pounded out my frustration and disembodied my anger into the ground so hard I could have snapped my poles, one of the techniques I found so therapeutic on my trauma recovery programme.

I remember hearing the late great Dr Mosely interviewing happiness guru Dr Rangan Chatterjee (well worth a listen on Sounds), who explained one of his top tips to keep happy when we feel wronged by someone is to re-frame the situation, making them the hero of their own story.

I do this now and immediately my mood lifts. I am back in a place of thankfulness for this beautiful day. Now I see the brown and white butterflies dancing in the shadows across my path, the tiny lizards shooting into stoney crevices at lightening speed as I pass by, the flock of jostling sparrows chattering in the hedgerows so reminiscent of my Derbyshire lane strolls. I focus on using my senses and immediately hear a familiar call. I stop and peer into the dark canopy of the oak above and instantly the bird falls silent. A few seconds later I move on and the song starts up again, feeling out of danger. Ah, he has forgiven me for worrying him momentarily and here he is on the path just in front, the familiar orangey breast of our friendly robin.

In my happier mood, I pick up accents of the pilgrim greetings and notice those who are up for a brief chat. Two such pilgrims pause. Fiona is from Melbourne and has today set off from an auberge with Stephen. I struggled to place his accent and he explained he is now happily retired in Lagos on the Algarve, somewhere I have enjoyed sea kayaking and dolphin watching on several occasions, but had worked in San Diego for many years. I salute Stephen for not only completing the tough Camino Frances, but extending his pilgrimage to Finisterre. He tells me his most inspiring moments were leaving his stone at the Iron Cross and walking into Santiago with a South American woman he had met, who had shared deeply, forming a pilgrim bond. 'You were the person she needed, at the right time' I smile. This is camino, we agree.

We part lifted. Now the route goes through extensive harvested fields of rich chocolate earth and flattened golden stalks, which remind me my home church in Tideswell is celebrating harvest festivals this weekend, distributing the provisions gathered to local food banks. My heart immediately turns to counting my many blessings as I remember my huge solo pilgrimage from Lisbon last year, where I hobbled for days on blistered feet through a farming landscape much more arid than these lush green ones. Though I am less grateful for the all- pervasive smell of manure which is a constant as the heat rises steadily for the next few hours. Funny how we can get too used to bad things in our life, so that we stop noticing them after a while, when actually we should be doing something about removing them.

Cows mooing against the constant drone of farm machinery. Enormous shiny tractors and small elderly ones forcing me onto the grass, wind in my ears, the first day for a few I don't need the chin strap on my hat to counter the gusts.

I am through a village, nearly at my destination when a glimpse of faded coral shirt and pink baseball cap catches my eye. A makeshift scarecrow on a cross of garden canes in the tiny allotment in front of a stone house. Young men in black with trendy ponytails pass. I especially notice lots of solo women pilgrims today and greet them warmly for attempting the 'safe crazy' Camino.

At the top of another hill I buen camino William from Ohio, fresh from the extreme Invierno route, William has been working in a Donativo (donation) albergue with a US Christian charity and is radiant from the experience. He walked the French with his brother last year and this year wanted to support others, something I had been considering after my own encounter with the same group last year.

Surely I am at my Albergue now? At last, an arrowed sign up a lane past whitewashed houses. I drag my weary feet another 200 metres to see a flight of stone steps rising to the shadowy doorway. My heart sinks, only twenty or so but they look Everestian to me. Up, up, up I go, not a sherpa in sight. The hospitalero is flustered, trying to understand the question of a young Korean woman who just checked in ahead of me, but after the passport routine and offering a three course pilgrim dinner with wine for a bargain 13 euros (I glady accept, she does not), guides both of us through to our accomodation.

The shared meal gathers about thirty pilgrims round a trestle table and we share lives and stories over steaming bowls of delicious lentil chorizo soup, pasta bolognaise bake and orange cake, washed down with fruity carafes of red wine. Well, it would be rude not to!

Anna is from Maryland in the US. She has walked many caminos, just finished the Frances and is heading to Finisterre. Funnily enough she too is a member of the British Pilgrimage Trust, so we discuss some of the great pilgrimage trails she may try when time allows her to venture to the UK. Taylor (not Swift) opposite is a self employed US writer and currently traveling with Isis (not terrorist) from the Netherlands, whose Classically- cultured parents named both their daughters after goddesses. On my other side are a couple from Denmark who live on a tiny island of sixty souls whose entire circumferance is just under a marathon distance, he informs me.

We laugh, chat, eat, drink, share... and never cross paths again. The deep, transient joy of the camino.