Espot – La Guineta d’Agneu

I stepped out of the shower and looked myself in the mirror. I was decidedly leaner than I’d been in years, sporting a solid outline of my abs. My hiking shorts and pack hip belt were both way too big and had to be cinched as tight as they could. For such a profoundly grimy undertaking, it felt good to see that thru-hiking could deliver on vanity too. I wanted another rest day, but there were no places to stay. Thus, today would be a half day walking only 12 km into La Guineta d’Agneu through dry, forested foothills.

I made my way into town and plonked down at yesterday’s café. Ignoring the staff’s pointed stares, I sat there for four hours. It felt so good to have some space to not deal with immediate fixes. Water refills, applying sunscreen, checking the map, cleaning clothes, drying my tent, making food. To get some space to not only think about the next stretch of trail, but life after that. New habits to implement, sports to try out, journeys to take, projects, goals, and ambitions to stake out. Absurdly, not many things I wasn’t already doing came to mind. The luxury of having to get creative about your dreams. And, in the context of the last two years, to finally be able to look beyond the immediate term and dream of bigger things again.

In the afternoon I finally packed up my things and made my way out of town, into pine forests, undulating quite gently through the seared landscape of the valley. Without Annie, I was once again alone in my head - and for the first time on the trip, I allowed myself to dwell on the past 2,5 years since Covid erupted and ended my life just as it was peaking. To the steady thuds of my boots hitting the dirt track, I allowed waves of sadness, disappointment, but also the dull ache of resignation flow through me.

The pandemic had broken and splintered me until I felt like a shard of glass. I was in perpetual, searingly sharp pain which coated every experience I had of the world. All I could see and feel of my being was my wild grief, and I became terrified that eventually it would be all that anyone else could see too. The pain of living was such that on many many days, all I could do was sit catatonically for hours in my chair, with a black leaden hole where my chest should be. 2020 became 2021. 2021 became 2022.

But through the steady passing of time and forceful exposure to every joyful glimmer of life, like debris on a beach, the shard of glass that was me eventually blunted. The sharpest edges of my personality were polished over by dear, loyal friends and the shining life I had chosen for myself in London. Their love, and the love for the place where I belonged, had moulded me into the person I had wanted to be. In the words of a cherished ex: “You’ve created your dream life. All you have to do now is show up for it.”

This is not one of those “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” anecdotes. I would have given anything for the pandemic not to have happened, for the last two years to shine with unbridled brightness instead of forming a hideous scar in the narrative of my life. My cognitive skills were a fraction of what they’d been, and I was the embodiment of anxious attachment that Instagram psychologists love to talk about. I was a version of okay now despite of, not because of, what happened. In that regard, this thru-hike was not about healing. If you’ve ever been through trauma, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the fact that healing isn’t a linear process of improvement with some grand moment of redemption at the end. It is turbulent, ambivalent, you emerge from it changed – and now always for the better. Maybe this thru-hike was about perspective, of ridding myself of my learned helplessness and appreciating that I was genuinely back in the driver’s seat of my own life. I felt younger now than I had at 25. My late 20s body had blown me away with its stamina and strength. I’d seen spectacular sights and was so enriched by my meeting with Annie and Christine. Like the countless sapphire and emerald lakes I’d looked down on from mountaintops, the lights of my achievements and loves also lay glittering below me if I looked at them from above.

On this slightly more uplifting note, I entered into a small hamlet. Suddenly, a petite blonde woman I instantly saw was a thru-hiker came towards me looking very worried.

-        “Excuse me, I’m so sorry” she started, “There are two big dogs loose who are barking and growling at me, they won’t let me pass. Do you have experience with dogs?

I did not have any mentionable experience with aggressive and territorial Spanish farm dogs, no. But I had experience with horses, sexist pigs in the city, and now also mad cows. I was also too mentally spent to feel particularly terrified in that moment. That would just have to do.  

We came around the corner, and true enough, two angry mutts growled ferociously at us, blocking the road.

-        “SUCH A GOOD BOY!” I chirped, approaching the closest dog slowly and with my eyes averted, angling my body completely sideways. The dog seemed slightly perplexed at this change of tactics. He kept growling but seemed uncertain as I inched my way towards him, humming a steady stream of sweet talk. He wasn’t more than 3 metres away as we slipped by and sped out of the hamlet. Phew!

The blonde woman’s name on the blog shall be Eva, as her government job warrants some privacy. She had a fascinating international background and a very gentle, even reserved, demeanour. She was hiking her second stage of the GR11, having started in Candanchu. It was her one yearly solo holiday sans husband and two kids. She was nimble and lightweight, and we walked along the roads together for a good few km into Guineta. The enormous campsite housed about 100 vans and our little tents. We ate dinner at the campsite restaurant, Eva carefully steering away from anything that was fried or not fresh. However, her hidden powers came out as we were about to go to bed and an extremely boisterous group of men were playing football nearby. The kindly asked them in English to tone it down, to which they shouted something rude back in a Slavic-sounding language. Her blue eyes aflame, Eva shouted a whole soliloquy back at them in flawless Russian (turns out they were from Ukraine) that she was hosting refugees in her house and what cowards they were to run away from defending their country! Instant silence. I was deadly impressed and snuggled into a peaceful night in my sleeping bag.