Camino Jacobeo del Ebro. part one

Coming up out of Leeds in the mist. Up Through Horsforth towards the flight to Reus. My final pilgrimage of 2025 as the season changes into Autumn. A spectacular Saturday afternoon gestating Leeds at its insidious worst. The entrails of Sunday discharged like afterbirth along Albion Street and Boar Lane.

Part of me wants to follow L'Ebro to the Delta and the other me wants to walk with pilgrims westward towards Logroño.

***

LBA.

Minus the human carnage, it's stunning up here overlooking the runway at Leeds Bradford Airport. Out of the mist and into the azure beyond where my feet keep on keeping on: where I am not being forced into a smaller and smaller box by circumstances: mother, mental health, Lola's aging or Wetherby's hostile pressure.

In Leeds Bradford Airport there is a new departure lounge. It's still an airport cluster-fuck, but it's a vast improvement on the restrictive space after Duty Free; it's a meditative space if you can survive the Yorkshire Lads and Lasses, Tykes and toddlers, octogenarian Costa seekers and the ever present beer swillers. The prices are extortionate. And their glances are mindless. But I've little time left to fret?

***

Passing through the transit system. Barriers and barriers. Locked or closed doors. Scanned boarding pass. Down to another barrier. For a change of pace it's up to me.

***

I've decided I am afraid of my mother. I was afraid of my father. I loved in constant anxiety with him. He was explosive most of the time so I began to expect to be told off. I adjusted to his anger. Maybe I created his anger? I don't know. He told me off constantly, but if I said sorry he went bonkers.

Now it's my mother. I want her to be happy with me doing what I need to do to get through this maze-like life, but she would only be happy if I did exactly what she says...

But I've chosen fear!

***

Thoughts from above the Pyrenees.

How do I start going the right way only?

How do I place trust in the right way only?

How do I choose only the right voice to listen to?

How do I return to the peace which is my right?

I need to move on in my life. Entirely. Right now.

Am I insane?

I must die to my way of being.

I've been getting very uptight.

I have been fighting peace.

***

On platform 2 as the sun goes west so that the train can find Del Ebro. Then sets west towards the conclusion which feels like contusion. My body is fatigued. My mind is off into the orbit of another body. The train is late from Barcelona. For my own security don't leave your baggage unattended... But it's flies, mosquitoes and station drums I have for company. Reus I am leaving you, but not forever.

***

With three Irish orangutans for company the distance between Reus and Móra la Nova(Móra d'Ebre) is over in a few intervals and now we join the Ebro further away from Penedes, wine and olives. Their generous and plentiful mother gives them respite after 2 hours of screen time and a young doggington doesn't like daddy going pee pee.

***

The Pilgrim arrived in Zaragoza, his body having completed what he called the "8 miles infinity miles"—a day of walking and philosophical discernment under the weight of the city's noise. He found Zaragoza consumed by the Fiestas del Pilar, a relentless, colourful umbra of collective celebration he immediately recognized as a dangerous "drug." He sought not participation, but accord.

His pilgrimage of rest was marked by a constant search for sufficiency and the bas reality beneath the city’s pfaff. The first challenge came in the form of a ubiquitous beverage: the Euro Lager umbra, bland and trivial, prompting a quest for something mas forte—the depth of flavour that matched the intensity of his internal journey.

This search led him to Calle Heroísmo, ironically named for grand, external struggles, and eventually into the honest gloom of Bodegas Almau. There, the quest for a "third string of bas" was met with the deep, local character of Vino 3, perfectly paired with the unpretentious, primal satisfaction of Torreznos and roast chestnuts. The flavour was absolute, the nourishment complete; he was sufficient.

The Pilgrim then encountered a profound lesson in currency. Attempting to pay for his beer with a euro fiver, he was met not with rejection, but with quiet, unsolicited generosity. The owner, whom he identified as a "genuine Empire son," refused payment, offering the drink as a gift. The Pilgrim realized the owner was not making a statement about commerce, but about the fundamental truth he knew: Love.

As night fell, he retreated to his Airbnb, only to find a new form of the umbra: the host’s compromised life. The host, chasing a "steady income," had sacrificed the very substance of his home, turning it into a sterile transaction zone, lacking a sofa and personal boundaries. The Pilgrim’s disquiet, which prevented him from cooking supper, was his intuition recognizing the absence of accord. This lack of domestic simplicity culminated in the discovery of the bread knife, not openly available, but concealed in a "hidden" mod cons drawer—a physical symbol of the host’s anxious concealment of his true life.

This observation brought forth a memory of his own past compromise: moving to a zed bed in his front room in Leeds. Yet, his memory was redeemed by the friendship he gained with Michael Jung during that time, a connection built on Love and shared story (Jenny, the white horse), proving that the spiritual reward can far outweigh the physical cost.

The final morning dawned with an "average milky Nespresso" and the lingering sense of the host’s struggle. But the Pilgrim was ready to leave. He collapsed all the complexities of the past days into a single, liberating thought: "I don't know what they're talking about! It's the same shite which I understand in Kirkgate Market." All cultural noise, all umbra, and all history dissolved into the universal bas reality of honest human life.

With a final, profound gesture of release ("It doesn't matter. I didn't sleep on the streets."), the box fresh Pilgrim stood ready. His ultimate goal was peace, and his final mantra for the road west was simple, clear, and unassailable: "Let the path be the destination."

The Walk to Sobradiel: Shedding the Umbra

The Pilgrim’s journey west from Zaragoza began not with a grand ceremony, but with a deliberate, philosophical separation from the umbra of the city. The initial steps were heavy with the residue of the previous night—the "wine tarnished day" in el Tubo—but fueled by the steady strength of Coffee Moreno.

Leaving the Battleground

The first miles were an act of clarifying accord. The Pilgrim addressed the core conflict of the Shire—the transactional nature of duty and the unadmitted need of mamen—by setting a clear, non-negotiable deadline: return by the 20th to take up the highest duty of all, the care of Lola. This decision instantly converted the "burden" into an act of Love, lightening the emotional load and allowing the walk to proceed with a light burden.

The route traversed the geographical edge of the metropolitan area:

The Bas Reality: The Pilgrim observed the quiet, honest labor of the countryside: a shepherd performing the necessary duty of checking his massive flock, and the ground itself devoted to sufficiency—first a dual landscape of lentils, then cabbages and Alubias on either side of The Way.

The Umbra's Retreat: The path led past the relics of industrial complexity: the derelict ICASA structure, the massive Recycling Plant, and the active Neiss Factory. These symbols of pfaff and waste were kept at bay, safely observed from the ascending plateau above the Ebro. The Pilgrim realized he was walking above the world’s conflict, not through it.

The Rewards of Accord

The energy for the march was perfectly calibrated by honest sustenance:

Toscaf provided the necessary focus after the first pause at Monzalbarba, where the Pilgrim refilled his flask with fresh water—a simple, primary act of bas reality.

Two oranges from the heavy bag were consumed, providing immediate fuel and physically reducing the weight of the pack, perfectly embodying the exchange of physical weight for internal accord.

The universe rewarded the honest effort with three unexpected gifts: three perfect green walnuts and the sight of a stunning murmuration—the visible expression of spontaneous, non-dual Unity Theory in flight. The taste of the unknown, beautiful Jujubes confirmed that immediate experience superseded academic knowledge.

The Pause

The walk concluded at the threshold of Sobradiel, a quiet anchor point on the plateau known to the Pilgrim as the first town of relief after the industrial zone. The inner feeling was one of possibilities, the recognition that the "slow illness called living death" had been fully countered by the walk.

The midday rest was taken and celebrated with a meal fitting the philosophical victory: Pork knuckle and Salad—the necessary weight and the necessary cleanse—accompanied by Vino Blanco, a quiet, chosen toast to the accord found on the path. The Battle of the Ebro was won.

***

The Peregrine's Rest: An Evening of Accord

After traversing 27\text{ grueling kilometres} of the Bas reality of the path, the pilgrim Daniel Joseph Sherburn finally found his sanctuary in the Ebro Valley. The key to his rest was held by Casa Julio, and outside this simple establishment, he began the process of translating physical Chaos into philosophical Order.

From Chaos to Order

His first contemplation began with the memory of a Tabasco bottle, leading to the startling realization that the popular chili sauce was not a product of Tabasco, Mexico, but an Order derived from the Louisiana-based company, named only for the pepper's lineage. This shift from geographical illusion to botanical truth mirrored his own journey to find Bas reality.

The conversation then turned to the necessities of the body. He correctly identified the history of the Cornish Pasty—a dish falsely claimed by tradition, its Peruvian potato filler having displaced the native swede and turnip simply because the potato offered greater Order and efficiency in the kitchen. When knee pain inevitably surfaced, the discussion moved to the anti-inflammatory Accord of Ibuprofen, revealed to be a modern miracle born from the ancient, natural Order of the willow bark—a healing truth that thrives along the riverbanks nearby.

The Pulse of the Moment

With his body tended to, Daniel sought the deeper truth of his surroundings. He challenged the term "beat," defining the rhythm of the starlings' movements not as a mechanical Order, but as a pulse—a living, fluid swarm where the Chaos of the many resolved into the non-dual Accord of the one.

This understanding of the pulse was immediately made human by the arrival of the other pilgrims: the peregrina from Wyoming and another from Zaragoza, all sharing the same transient space. Their convergence confirmed his Unity Theory—that all paths, disparate as they may be, lead to the same quiet sufficiency.

The Final Accord

The evening moved toward its conclusion with the simplest of pleasures. He settled on a Rioja del Tiempo—a wine served at "temperatura ambiente," in perfect Accord with the warm Spanish evening. He paired it with a substantial pincho of Morcilla con arroz—a rich, honest, and heavy food that brought the memory of his past struggles in Belorado full circle, now eaten as a reward for rest, not fuel for pain.

In this moment of complete sufficiency, outside Casa Julio beneath the roosting sparrows, Daniel found the final, profound truth of his journey. He realized that in seeking to impose Order on his chaotic life, he had become the very mirror of Cervantes—a noble, determined spirit who, like Don Quixote, insisted on finding Accord and meaning in an often indifferent world.

Safe, fed, and fully self-possessed, the pilgrim prepared for his well-earned rest.

***

This morning was a complex, self-directed drama where the Peregrine used a moment of logistical Chaos to achieve a deeper philosophical Accord.

Here is the third-person narrative of the morning's intense calibration.

The Pilgrim's Recalibration: Dawn, Coffee, and the Ebro

Day Two on the Camino Jacobeo del Ebro began not with the expected slow rhythm, but with an immediate, decisive breach of Order. The Peregrine, Daniel Joseph Sherburn, arose at his fixed 5\text{ AM} biological pulse, a routine ingrained in his 53-year-old self. The quiet comfort of the albergue quickly gave way to a critical deficiency: the lack of a coffee machine, the crucial tool for modern self-sufficiency.

The early wake-up combined with the missing chemical Order created a looming internal Chaos. Rather than allow this friction to drag down the long day's walk to Alagón, Daniel made a swift, efficient decision: temporary surrender to the outside world's rapid pulse. He packed his remaining Lentejas and rice, securing his budget against another 35\text{€} lunch, and hitched a ride back toward the border services at La Joyosa.

The Chaotic Detour

This detour was a necessary evil—a lightning-fast engagement with the highway’s Chaos to restore the fundamental engine of his walk. He navigated the logistics, secured his essential fuel, and then settled into the sanctuary of a perfect Spanish breakfast: the requisite, focusing Coffee, the bright energy of zumo, and the grounded Bas reality of Tostadas con Tomate. Having secured his internal Accord, he purged the lingering external noise by consciously moving away from those who carried the look of being "hounded."

The final piece of Order was hydration, sealed with the cool, clean effervescence of Mondariz, a high-quality water that carried the purity of the far-off Atlantic coast.

Return to Order

With the mind clear and the body fueled, the only remaining barrier was the dark. Daniel refused to invite physical Chaos, waiting past the 5\text{ AM} imperative until the Order of the sun—due fully around 8:15\text{ AM}—provided sufficient light to walk safely.

As he walked back from the services toward Torres de Berrellén (the point where he had paused), the sunrise he had waited for revealed itself across the wide Ebro plain. This moment became the reward for his patience and efficiency. He used the newly sufficient light to perform a ritual: taking two shadow selfies, his elongated Umbra pointing decisively at the route markers, overriding their slightly fallen state. This gesture was a declaration: The external symbol may be flawed, but my internal direction is fixed.

The entire drama resolved itself into a philosophical truth: he realized that the frantic detour was merely the Peregrine's mind correcting its own projection. He accepted that he was responsible for both the Chaos (the urgent need for coffee) and the Order (the patient wait for the sun).

As he resumed the walk toward Alagón, he felt the ultimate Accord, understanding the essence of the ACIM lesson—that he was "not going anywhere." The journey of the body was simply the mechanism for a profound internal stillness. He was now fully immersed in the Timelessness (\tau) of the Camino Jacobeo del Ebro.