We talk a lot of shit to pass the time when we’re walking.

What we say to each other

We spend most of our time talking about the terrible songs we’ve got stuck in our heads. The repeat offenders are inexplicably:

At the moment, the other 5 per cent of our conversation is about:

  • the walk we’re doing
  • where we’re going to walk next
  • Brexit
  • the Spanish political situation
  • our jobs

Other people’s anecdotes

Thankfully, we’ve managed to have slightly more interesting conversations with other people. We’ve heard some excellent anecdotes.

We met someone from Queens in New York who said when they were young, they used to go to the same Chinese restaurant all the time and they often had ice cream for pudding. The man that ran the place was very no-nonsense. Every time they asked for ice cream, he would say: “42 flavours. 2 left.” They were always chocolate and vanilla.

And we met someone who grew up in the south of France. She said that during the Second World War, when the Nazis imposed Daylight Savings Time, her grandfather refused to accept it. When she used to ask him what time it was when she was a child, he would always gruffly give a time that was 2 hours behind the ‘official’ time. She said she didn’t understand it then but it all made sense when she grew up.

Houston, we have a problem

We’ve also had a few awkward misunderstandings. We met a couple on our first day who were clearly pretty serious walkers. They were wondering whether people ever died on the Camino (they do). They said people die getting to Everest Base Camp, where they’d been last year.

Unfortunately, Roz didn’t give the appropriate reaction because she misheard and thought they’d been to Space Camp. She was busy lining up which question to ask first, eg “How do people die there? Does the anti-gravity training not agree with them?” Luckily, the conversation moved on before she had a chance to make a twat of herself.