LUCUS AUGUSTI

I was so used to the  slow rhythm of walking that when I took an extended bus ride, I had the oddest sense of being roughly translocated, like being beamed down onto a strange Star Trek planet.  Here I was suddenly half way across the country, and although the territory was sort of familiar, it was still a bit jarring.  The early morning fog which greeted me shrouded the city in mist, giving the impression that there was really no other place than here.

I had no sooner stepped out of the hotel than I realized I'd have to go back and fetch my jacket.  I'd forgotten about the fog and misty rain of Galicia. (No wonder there's still a thriving trade in handmade umbrellas here).   Then I headed for a staircase I remembered from the night before when I was buying bread.  I was taking a morning constitutional atop the Roman walls of Lugo.

Up high it was yet another world.  Everyone, it seemed, used the wide thoroughfare up on the  walls to get around.  I saw teenaged girls, runners, dog walkers, and people going to work.

 I communed with pigeons and jackdaws, sharing their birds-eye view.  I could see the town within the walls with its beautiful slate roofs and well kept plazas,  and the town without, elegant multi-storey apartments, white brick excrescences from the seventies, and  even more run-down areas.  I could see out to the River Mino at the foot of what I realized now was a very substantial hill.  I could see the University and all of the suburbs.  There were churches, convents, archaeological excavations, and urban renewal at work.
As I rounded every curve, something new unshrouded itself from the mist.  Far in the distance I could see the twin spires of the Cathedral where I would visit after I'd had some coffee.  This was one tourist venue that did not disappoint!

Apart from the walls themselves, much of Roman Lugo, or Lucus Augusti, as the Romans called it, is underground now.  By the end of the day I'd seen the mosaics which once graced a fine villa, just down (and under!)  the street from my hotel, and had sought out the remains of the Roman baths, which were, in a word, underwhelming.  I'd walked down the steep hill to the Mino, and enjoyed the croaking of frogs in its reedy shallows. I was surprised because the steep ups and downs in Lugo weren't bothering my legs unduly.   I'd walked to the Library and written my emails, I'd had three meals in the same cafe, and watched a bit of live soap opera.

I'd had a really superb tour of the Cathedral from a sweet but insistent docent, who showed me wonders I would never have seen or understood on my own, quietly evangelizing as we went.   She spoke English perfect down to the ecclesiastical terminology we needed to talk of choirs and narthexes (narthices?) and other less than everyday topics.  She explained that the Cathedral was one of only five places in the world where the Blessed Sacrament, the body of Christ, was permanently present.  Mass is celebrated perpetually on the half hour, and has been, according to some sources, for over a thousand years.  My tour guide also showed me Our Lady of the Big Eyes, an ornate medieval stone statue.  We could only peep at her because she was in the chapel where the service was going on.  My guide pointed out that the statue didn't have exceptionally large eyes, and explained that the appelation was metaphysical, that the largeness of her eyes meant that she was all-seeing, and had compassion for all of the suffering she saw.  I got to see a spectacularly gaudy Gaudi altarpiece, too.

Everything I saw in Lugo pleased me because I'd made up my mind to finish my trip by heading on the bus to Sarria, the last town from which one is eligible for a compostela.  From there I would walk the last stretch of the Camino Frances which I had done in 2008, and which I'd loved.  I wouldn't be going to Madrid, not this time.