Vendimia

Eddie has been grape picking at Acova!

eddie rock making wine

What happened to Eddie next:

So what did happen to Eddie Rock?

You mean Eddie Rock the author of ‘The sinners guide to the Camino De Santiago. Yes him, that one! Well I shall tell you.

Eddie Rock went on the Camino de Santiago over ten years ago in search of salvation of his many sins!  Then decided to write a  comedy story based on his own adventures and misadventures. Yeah big deal! Loads of people write books on the camino anyway so what! Yeah so what!

It’s what happened to Eddie afterwards that is the best story of all...

For some reason whilst growing up in crap weather Britannia i had always wanted to go to ‘Sunny Spain’.’Viva Espana’ sang the Dutch singer in the 70’s It sounded a fantastic place.  But even after reaching the ripe old age of 33 and having gone as far afield as Australia, Canada and The middle east i had still not touched down on Spanish soil. Well it was shame on me ! and quite literally.

A chance encounter with a beautiful Irish hippy girl and an unfortunate brush with the law had me questioning life’s complexities and time to ask the celestial powers that be ‘Just what the feck is going on here? Why are we here? Will someone tell me? Preferably not a strange celebate man in a black and white outfit. But anyway religion aside i needed to go for a very long walk and get my head together! So i joined the long march of the happy the sad and those inbetween and set off walking from the French Pyrenees to the fair city of Santiago de Compostela in the beautiful region of Galicia. And did it do me any good? At the time no! I did not feel any different that when i’d started and whilst i’d been away my problems had been mounting up. ?

Goodbye England! Hola Espana…

The ferry journey was boring as hell the food was crap and expensive and i met no one remotely interesting. 

So i got drunk! Twice!  and lost quite a lot of money playing slot machines. Welcome to my life! I am the sinner Eddie Rock!

The call for motorists to go immediately to their vehicles was my call to action. I had been dreading this moment from the off as my van could often on starting  create  a startling smoke screen worthy of cinematic merit, thus signalling to everyone in the area that there was a nugget in their mist! Thankfully i disembarked without carbon monoxide poisoning the whole of the lower decks! Hallelujah things are looking up! 

Quickly through customs and out into the streets of Santander, Hung over and quickly realizing that i have a blind spot that makes city driving a game of wacky Russian roulette. Stressed mind says quickly get out of the city!

As per usual i hadn’t planned where i was going, what i was doing or anything, all i had was a name and number in my diary of a man called John Bottril  in Galicia that was offering me accommodation and food in exchange for a few hours a day work on some scheme called ‘Helpex’ that i had not even heard of! . The following day I arrived in the small village of Ruitalan on the  border of Leon and Galicia. I paid homage to the small pilgrims hostal there and gave thanks yet again to hosteleros Luis and Carlos who had once helped me many moons ago with a miraculous healing! I still am amazed to this very day! But if it wasn’t for those to guys there would have only been two sinners guides in the world instead of three! They couldn’t remember me as over as 8 years had passed and probably a few million pilgrims but Luis made me a cup of coffee and we shared a joke yet again.     

The arrival:

After bidding a good day to my latter day saviours and the healing waters of Ruitalan i made my way over the border into Galicia and spotted a couple of ancient elders wrestling with an ox and a plough! What a great sight, i felt glad to be back yet again, but this time i did’nt have a return ticket, this time i planned to stay!

I decided to stop beside the monastery of Samos and touch base with the man called John Botrill. Another man called Mike answered the phone this time and gave me directions to a place called Lavanderia which was near to a place called Ferreira de Panton, which was near to a place called Monforte de Lemos. I wrongly assumed that this gentleman would turn out to be his son.

As i got into the town of Panton and seemingly more lost, a jolly roly poly woman directed me down a tiny alley and back out into more countryside. Pants on Pants off, pants on pants off i thought as i left Panton. Then the mans name kept going through my brain: sounds a bit like botty?  The other man!? Something didn’t add up here?  Lavanderia sounds a bit...oh no....there not, they couldn’t be...

‘Yoo hoo over here’ came the effeminate voice! And out stepped the two  friends.

My initial instinct was to slam the van into reverse and speed backwards as fast as i could go but an old man with a herd of goats was blocking my path, i could not go forwards as the road narrowed. I was trapped!

Lavanderia: John and Mike,

Luckily they were not dressed like gay folk off the television, like Boy George or members of the Village people or even Elton John throwing a wobbler in his velour tracksuit, not even a handlebar tash! Thank fuck for that! I was too tired to drive any further

Eddie doesnt know which way to turn!

my book! is great by the way!

Although many books have been written on the subject of the Camino de Santiago

I believe that the present is the only one in existence guaranteed to lighten the load of every pilgrim’s heavy backpack. The Sinners Guide is a laugh out loud; laugh a minute essential item for the modern day pilgrim. More like the antics of some of the bawdier characters in Chaucer's Canterbury tales than the pretentious spiritual bilge knocked out about the Camino de Santiago by more 'celebrated' authors, Eddie Rock's book is an honest, entertaining warts-and-all romp as Eddie takes us on a long walk of alcoholic indiscretions, brushes with the law and accidental genital applications of deep heat, all the while providing an entertaining commentary upon his surroundings, while never taking himself too seriously. It makes for a refreshing change from the usual run of Camino fodder, treating the whole thing as some reverential sacred cow!

Well Hello again, its been a long time, still looking for that big break, hahaha
adios

2013 unlucky for some?!?

According to a local Miega (white witch) from this province, 2013 will be Eddie Rocks year?

here is an except from my book: I will be adding bits through the following months so as to wet peoples appetites fro this fine literary creation.:

Introduction

Suzie

     ‘Her eyes they shone like diamonds, I thought her the queen of the land and her hair hung over her shoulders tied up with a black velvet band’. Well, that was Suzie, almost…

The musicians played on with the traditional old classic and I sank deeper into the frolicking blue eyes of the mysterious blonde hippy girl sat beside me. Her happy face sparkled as she giggled naughtily at my tales of global misadventure and now seemed a good time to introduce Suzie to a very good friend of mine; a special friend who had travelled back from Amsterdam with me (in my shoe!)

 Mr. Jack Herrer?

As we walked out through the smoky bar to meet Jack, I couldn’t help but notice Suzie’s fine physique  Her figure was perfect as far as I could tell;  slim and shapely in all the right places and when she walked she took very long strides giving her an almost panther like step. ‘So where’s this Jack friend of yours?’ she asks.

 ‘He’s just arrived’ I laugh, pulling a large joint from my pocket.

 ‘Ladies before Gentlemen’ I say handing her the smoke. Our hands touch for the first time releasing a spark of sexual energy that bounces around my body, arousing the most base of intentions.

 In the darkness her pretty face glows, as she takes a hit with smoke billowing from her sexy lips into the warm summer night.

 ‘Wow holy Jeysus’ she laughs ‘My head `s fecking spinning!’

 ‘No; Holy Jack Herrer, Cannabis cup winner three times!’ I tell her. 

 ‘It’s similar to the stuff we smoked in Spain last year’ she says

 ‘You ever heard of the Camino de Santiago?’ she asks.

  ‘No I never smoked it!’

  ‘Noooo you fecking eejit, It’s an old pilgrimage route through Spain. I walked it last year with my three girlfriends Marie, Siobhan and Clare, ‘Great craic we had every day.’

As Jack Herrer began to take us on his journey, Suzie began to take me on hers.  I sat back and listened intently as her gorgeous Irish accent spirited me up and away on her fun filled journey through Spain.

Her happy hippy tale began in the French Pyrenees and ended five hundred miles later on the Atlantic coast. It sounded like a fantastic adventure and in my Herrer haze I saw myself on the trail, becoming  one with nature, surrounded by a posse of sexy hippy girls whilst sleeping out under the stars and little parties around the campfire,  leaving the rat race far behind.

The more I smoked the better it all sounded and I particularly liked the parts of the story where the girls got naked, drunk or stoned and often all three at the same time!

An alternative hippy holiday, just the job for a tortured soul like me.

  ‘Suzie I’m sold, how do I get there?’ 

  ‘Hang on’ she says, ‘when you finish the pilgrimage all your worldly sins are forgiven’.

 ‘What, all of them?

 ‘Yeah, all of them’ she says ‘and when you get to the sea you burn all of your clothes, get naked and party like its nineteen ninety nine!’

 ‘Wow I wish I’d been at that one’ I tell her.

 ‘Jesus you should go, it would do you the world of good’ she says smoking the last of the joint.

 The moon appears from behind the clouds and a million tiny sparkles illuminate the darkness.

  ‘We’re all made of stars you know’ she says staring into the night sky

  ‘Fancy another pint then? I ask her.

  ‘Jesus why not, sure we’re all sinners after all’ she laughs, leading me back inside the swaying pub to the tune of The Wild Rover…

I wake the next lunch time seeing stars, with an epic hangover raging through my shrunken brain and flash backs of the previous night keep coming in waves and bounds like some kind of Irish Quentin Tarrantino movie with plenty of pulp fiction and Jack Herrer thrown in for good measure.

 I reach for my Guinness soaked cigarettes and spy some drunken scribbles on the packet.  I remember Suzie writing it, something about some hippy book or something that I should read by some Brazilian Guru, but I can hardly make out the words…

Pablo Coolio…?  Surely not..?

Sounds more like a gangster than a guru!