30: where does a pilgrim shelter hide?

It was raining again, and I was walking on muddy roads between fields. Sometimes it hardly qualified as a road, it was just a stretch of swampy grass. At one point I noticed that someone was walking a ways behind me. He had a staff and a backpack, so I assumed he was another pilgrim.

He eventually caught up with me. He was an elderly Frenchman, and we soon saw that there would not be much communication between us, as we lacked a common language. He was walking faster than me, which was a little embarassing, considering that he was probably around 70.

The trail eventually led to a paved road. After a steep uphill climb, I saw a yellow "A" inside of a house symbol painted on the asphalt. This was the symbol for a pilgrim shelter, and I was excited. It had an arrow and the words "300 M" painted next to it.

About three hundred meters later, however, the road split. There was a building there which I assumed would have to be the shelter, but it was not marked in any way. I knocked. There was no answer. I put down my backpack and my guitar, and walked down one road for a bit to see if there was anything further down which could be a pilgrim shelter, but found nothing. I tried the other road. When a car finally came by, I stopped it and asked the people inside if there was a pilgrim shelter around here, and they said there wasn't.

I couldn't believe this. It was marked on the map I had received yesterday in Orio. It was marked by a yellow sign on the pavement. Where does a pilgrim shelter hide itself from a weary pilgrim? What is a weary pilgrim to do when the shelter has hidden itself?

For a while I stood in the rain and agonized. Then I decided I'd keep walking to Deba. I was already in a sufficiently bad mood, sufficiently exhausted and sleep deprived, sufficiently drenched by the rain, and sufficiently aching in my joints and muscles, that I felt a certain masochistic zeal to keep this going for a while yet. I also indulged in the pleasure of grumbling about it.