Going round in circles. La Dama Verde Almeida de Sayago
La Dama Verde, hidden among the trees.
La Dama Verde is a Spa.
I would have preferred to be setting out for Santiago or Rome, but a circular walk of 10 km or so was a good start. I had my doubts mainly because having worked fairly incessantly since February on houses and moving, with a break in May for weddings in the UK, I wanted space and solitude and simplicity. I imagined a Spa as meeting some of these desires, space and quiet in particular, but “Spa” denotes for me “pampering and comfort” which generally deaden the spirit like over-eating. La Dama Verde turned out to be a different sort of Spa.
La Dama Verde – Magic waters smelling of rotten eggs.
The waters at their source, the Hervidero. Crystal clear and smelly.
My plan for the week, before I elected the Spa, had been to start a Camino, probably in Montserrat. I had been longing to set off once again for Santiago, longing for the balance between physical effort, inner silence, solitude, intellectual quiet and prayer. However, I elected to go with Pilar to a remote spot in Zamora taking the risk of being pampered and drowned in luxury. This risk is greatly reduced when the Spa waters, served with every meal, stink of rotten eggs.
Huge water bottle which residents drink copiously and survive. This is surely a miracle.
My contract exempted me from having to make contact with these waters but every other guest oozed praise from every pore for the baths, the torrents, the showers, the massages and the jacuzzis which ensured a complete drenching complemented by inhalation of warm, sulphuric vapours and a special form of torture called a Ducha Escocèsa, a Scottish shower. This shower delivers the magic waters alternately in blasts of hot, then freezing cold and even some seasoned philospasers decline this treatment. I avoided them all and feel no worse off for it.
La Dama Verde, pilgrimage in a circle.
La Dama Verde is not a Spa dripping in luxury which was my first comforting impression. Indeed it is a homely Spa, intimate and welcoming. The staff and the owners are quite unpretentious, always helpful and help create a family atmosphere from the moment the stiff, stressed and cautious guest arrives from the outside world of evil consumerism. The Spa has rooms which are more than adequate and, laudably, do not have televisions. The grounds have a delightful building which houses the original spring set aside as a space for quiet and meditation. It succeeds in its purpose and is a haven of peace.
Wee house for meditation built over original well for the Spa.
The Spa has a New Age air to it and enjoys visits from barefoot youth with esoteric tastes and pony-tails as well as fussy geriatrics and normal people like myself. Being in Spain it serves wine with every meal, so there is an alternative to the rancid smelling water and when I asked for it I was given gaseosa (sweet fizzy water) as a concession.
So I found myself in the Zamora savannah, in a multi-sect Spa for my pilgrimage week. What concerned me most was that I wasn’t walking to go anywhere: whenever I set off in the morning I returned to the same place. Many walkers are happy with this. I, however, like to feel the kilometres stretching out beyond the horizons, over sierras and borders. Only then do I feel I am really walking. My attitude had to change because all I could do was walk in circles.
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The Geological route.
Snogging rocks.
While Pilar went off to the mysterious rituals of the waters and Tibetan bells, I headed off into the uncharted land of wild sheep pastures and the thin forest of encina (a type of oak tree) which is known in Spain as dehesa. I followed my walking ritual in which I enter into prayer. I was a bit self-conscious that my spirituality is particularly Christian, largely Ignatian but charged with contemplative practice all from this one tradition. That’s fine, but I was leaving behind in the balneario a greatly mixed group of people who were exploring all kinds of “other” spirituality or well-being techniques like re-birthing, channelling, and the deactivation of the cellular memory with images of female gods in every corner and a huge phallic monument in the gardens.
Leaving it all to the imagination.
I don’t dismiss any of these therapies or practices because I believe they all meet genuine needs of people. However, I have decided to stick with the tradition I know well; being at a stage of life where there is not time enough left to indulge in everything, as I once believed possible. Being Spanish, many of the residents will probably co-incide with me at Mass tomorrow, taking a break, exchanging the Ganges for the Tiber. I rejoice in our plurality.
I soon sunk into my contemplative walking greatly helped by a changing landscape which began with the sweeping golden fields of pasture.
Sweeping field of pasture
The months of turmoil and seemingly incessant chores had eaten away at my inner balance. I would have preferred to be setting out for Santiago or Rome, but a circular walk of 10 km or so was a good start. Step by step, I found I was walking in slowly growing peacefulness. When the landscape changed to nearly dry valleys and giant boulders wedged between, against, under and over one another, some about to totter and roll away, I began to feel more free of the confines which had blocked off opportunities to get outside and walk.
Balanced on a pebble.
I arrived back at the Spa optimistic that the week might restore my contemplative spirit, even if I was walking in circles.
