Note for Jeff Crawley.
In 2002 my daughter and her companion were honoured to accompany Bernie for the day. Here's an excerpt from her diary.
After sleeping very well we walked for 9km to the next town for breakfast. It was a fantastic little bar in Castrojeriz. It had the yummiest tortilla in Espana, funky Latino music, internet and best of all, a very fine pooch. I saw this German Shepherd sitting outside the back door shivering and I said to the owner that he looked cold. The owner let him in and he was so friendly, he ran around very excited and we had a great time playing with him. The owner showed me pictures of this dog, Bernie, in a book about the Camino, Bernie was famous! Apparently he walks along the Camino with pilgrims quite often. We thought the owner was telling us we could take Bernie to Boadilla and he would come by later in his car and pick him up. We couldn’t believe our luck, after jokingly asking people if we could take their dog with us, finally we could! The owner gave us two apples for our walk and said hasta luego. Off we went with Bernie in tow. We were so lucky to have him, we weren’t paying attention to where we were going and Bernie would patiently wait at the turn off. We threw sticks which he would chase happily and bring back. We walked through a small town, Itero del Castello, where lots of old men knew Bernie and stopped to chat. We discovered that Bernie didn’t walk the Camino every day so we felt extra special.
The next small town, Itero de la Vega, was an option to stay at. My feet and legs were hurting me so I felt like stopping but the place was horrible. There was one bar that didn’t serve food and the atmosphere was very hostile, the only shop that sold anything was closed and didn’t open for an hour and a half. I was positive that the friendly man who kept telling us when the shop opened actually owned the place and felt like asking him if he could open up just for us. We left town and trudged another 8.4km to Boadilla. I was pretty much in a lot of pain so for the first time, after many offers, I swapped packs with Maggie. It was amazing how much easier it was to walk without a bag hanging down against my bum.
To our delight, the hostel in Boadilla was lovely. We rocked up with Bernie and his owner was already there. I think he’d been waiting a while due to his jolly nature and glass in hand. He ushered us in, sat us down and bought us a drink. Forget sangria, forget tinto de verano, I have found my favourite Spanish drink – pacharan. You drink it in a tall glass with ice or in shot form. It has anise, which I don’t normally like but this is yummy. It instantly warmed our insides and made us relaxed. We were extremely sorry to say goodbye to Bernie but we felt so privileged to have been the ‘chosen ones’ for that day.
