Day 30 – what’s the one thing you can’t seem to find in Condom?

Last night’s school gite was a good experience. We took an Australian lady called M to dinner. She had only just arrived from home and was completely jet lagged. We helped her throw away a lot of her belongings including a big bag of Australian nuts weighing 350g. You can pick walnuts all along the Camino.

M is my age and is an actress and producer. She flies to France every year to walk another stage of the Via Podiensis. So for dinner we had another warm sheeps cheese salad, Fish and ice cream. It seemed silly to order half a litre of white wine for 6 Euros when a litre was only 9 Euros. So we went for the litre and, to be honest, it wasn’t quite enough.

I’ve learnt from experience to choose a bed as far from C as possible. Last night he excelled himself by suddenly, in the middle of the night, shouting out in German while thrashing around in his sleeping bag. The whole room woke with a start thinking WW3 had started. This morning I asked him if he slept well and he said he’d woken a few times. I thought it best not to mention the war.

We left M in a state of jet lag and walked the UNESCO way into Condom. C had used the last of his shower gel but the local supermarket only sold giant bottles and he thought he could buy a small tube in a pharmacy. But we couldn’t find a pharmacy anywhere. In the end we had to enquire in the tourist office and they directed us down to the river at the edge of town. But he didn’t have much luck and had to settle for a 200 ml tube at 5 times the price of the supermarket. While he was trying to sort out his shower gel options I was drawn to examine the small display of contraceptives, wondering if there might be some local brand. But no, not in a Catholic country. You can’t even find Condom chocs or rock. I think they could make more effort. Condom rock would be a big hit.