So I want to share a funny and amazing story about a hat.

A couple of days into our walking our friend Ronnie from Germany set out from a cafe where several pilgrims had gathered. Noël and I shouted to him that he had left his hat. Another pilgrim Nuno from Portugal jokingly said, “you all must like him. I was going to take his hat.” we all laughed.

Noël and I looked at each other and said, “don’t we have an extra hat!” We looked but we didn’t. The next day as we headed out of Rubiaes there was a white hat on a pole and Noël said let’s take it for Nuno as a joke. Noël sent him a message to ask where he was on the camino and he said that he had walked 40 kms that day. So we would not see him again. And fortunately he had found a hat.

The next day while we were walking Noël decided to leave it on another pole. We met up with Ronnie, Esther (from the Netherlands ) and Ani (from Spain). Esther got a message from other pilgrims asking if Ronnie had lost his hat and that they had found it. They sent a photo. It was the one Noël had left. But sadly Ronnie had left his hat behind again.

The couple, Ronnie and Maria (also from the Netherlands) brought it along and discovered that Ronnie had indeed lost his hat but the one they found was not it. We then explained that Noël had picked it up for Nuno…(you know that story).

Ronnie and Maria kept thinking they would leave it somewhere as they walked along, we even talked about all of us signing it but for some reason they kept walking with it attached to one of their backpack.

As they walked into Tui Spain an older Australian woman ran up to them and said that it was her hat. She had lost it several days before. She was so happy to get it back.

And that’s one of the reasons that a common saying on the camino is “the camino provides”.

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