Not Fortean per se, but with some overlaps into our areas of interest as a community...
Same with the following.
Anyone following the
General: Lost Threads Located will be aware that I'm convinced that a thread I started - entitled something like
The Walking Thread - All Seasons, which has since disappeared into the ether (alternative scenarios: 1. I'm operating in several similar dimensions. 2. I'm losing my marbles. 3. See 2).
Anyway, I have a Word copy of my first big post on that thread, which has some relevance here. (And if anyone is convinced they've read this before - please tell me, even if only to reassure me that I haven't imagined the whole thing.)
...
Back in May 2018 my (then) partner and I walked part of the Camino de Santiago: the final added on section, starting at Santiago de Compostela, heading towards the Galician coast – then up through Fisterre and Lires, finishing up at Muxia.
The trail winds through a landscape of misty hills, dense forest, and silent villages. Wind turbines cluster on hilltops – rising out of the cloud like bits of derelict spaceship. Where the land is farmed it is fertile looking arable, and Galicians breed very fine cattle. There are spectacular thunderstorms, clanky and forlorn church bells sound flatly from unseen places, and the fields and hedgerows heave with songbirds, their constant chattering accentuating the utter silence of the villages which, out of season, are otherwise deathly quiet. The land is depopulated and studded with half occupied hamlets and abandoned properties – out of season the empty holiday homes add to the air of desertion. Sometimes the shell of a long unoccupied house rubs shoulders with modern and well maintained homes - and the juxtaposition of derelict and shipshape reinforces the air of a humanity only half here.
Like the Basque country, there’s an almost northern European feel to this area of Spain – and a strong Celtic resonance. One feels that the place could easily share its gods with Cornwall or Ireland or the forested places further west or north.
Two other things. From what I gather, some of the Spanish nicknames for Galicians are not very flattering – the reason for this may be found in two other things associated with Galicia: witchcraft and smuggling – and most recently, drug-smuggling. These are, or have been, big influences in the region and the latter might explain why this mysterious and often silent landscape peppered with half inhabited, often silent hamlets also accommodates the odd plush and surprisingly located ‘business’; the income from
peregrinos may be significant, especially in the summer months – but out of the way restaurants and bars are perfect conduits for money laundering.
So, towards the end of day one – at a derelict house by a crossroads outside the very quiet hamlet of Carballo (not to be confused with the municipality of Carballo, which is further north) we came across a very sick horse – emaciated and obviously close to collapse. Being no RSPCA, or similar, in Spain, we contacted the local police and knocked on the door of the house opposite, where a local lady cleaning for the absent German owners told us (sympathetic but resigned) that the land belonged to a gypsy family, and that the police had been contacted on several occasions regarding the state of their livestock.
I borrowed a bucket and took some water over the road to the horse, and then took the opportunity to have a poke round the house. At first, I put the slightly odd and unnerving atmosphere down to the usual resonances given off by abandoned buildings; the house, I’d guess, was constructed some time post 1960’s, and not particularly distinctive in any way. But when I got to the garage full of rusting farm equipment I saw something above the door which pulled me up with a bit of a start:
As I said there is a strong tradition of witchcraft in Galicia – and my very first instinct was that this addition to the fabric of the property had nothing much to do with Catholicism, or an odd taste in home decoration, but was the expression of some less regular purpose. I may have been entirely wrong - it may just have been the atmosphere of that first day walking in an unknown landscape – but, to me – whether it’s the weathered (or maybe painted) eyes, or the odd crown, or the odd positioning, there is something really quite off centre about that thing.
There is a second phase to this.
The same evening we took a twin bedded room in a farmhouse/hostel in Logrosa, just outside Negreira. We were at the top of a creaky staircase leading directly upwards from the large and echoey flagged parlour, and we were two of only five people staying in the big rambling barn of a place that night.
That night while shuffling through the days photographs, I paused at the crowned lady: she still gave me the creeps, and in the gathering twilight I wondered if maybe I hadn’t brought something with me that was best left behind – and considered deleting the images until I reasoned that come daylight I’d probably feel less pagan than I did in the all-consuming country dark.
We both fell asleep almost immediately. However, barely an hour later I was woken by my partner climbing into my bed. She was a bit shaky and unnerved – she had had the vivid impression that she had woken because there was someone in the room, but could neither move or speak.
She was sure it was just a dream. And it most likely was. But what I didn’t tell her was that I too had woken with the conviction that someone had been in the room, and that this was somehow connected to an incredibly vivid dream I had just woken from.
A man – in his early 30’s maybe – with light brown curly hair had been standing in what looked like the same room, in front, and slightly to the left, of an elderly lady in a wheelchair. Both looked more northern European then Spanish, the lady quite elegant, the man slightly feminine. He had been talking to me - and although I don’t remember any exact words, I know that he was very earnestly explaining to me why it was that he could not leave this place – I assumed that this was to do with the lady in the wheelchair.
Just a dream – but a very vivid one, and one that stayed with me for the whole trip.
That’s my no-story. It seems insignificant and rambling down in print, but I can’t emphasise enough the odd atmosphere that first day left on the rest of the journey and the aura of mystery it leant to the rest of the trip.
Oh well.
