Steve : Bercianos has a strict no-getting-up-before-6:00am policy, which, on the whole, was adhered to. The promised snorefest (see yesterdays post) didn’t really happen. But sleep was slow to arrive because of the sweltering heat.

We looked at the ‘Vegetarian Way’ poster and decided to stop a few km before normal today in the tiny town of Reliegos, 6km before Mansillas, the usual stop. This will give us 24km to do to Leon tomorrow but that’s ok. We’ve booked hotel rooms in Leon so we can sleep in glorious solitude and use real TOWELS! Oh, the luxury.

The route today was hot and dry, and ran alongside the road.

After yesterday’s blisterfest I wore my sandals with thick socks, which might seem counterintuitive but seems to work for me – trading off coolness (in the thermodynamic sense, coolness in the fashion session having been abandoned long ago) and support. Frankly this part of the trail is a little boring.

H, J and I spent the walk discussing how to declutter ones wardrobe (capsule wardrobe, apparently), scuba diving and flying lessons (to the great surprise of J and me, H doesn’t actually know how to fly a plane. However he does seem to be able to do pretty much everything else…).

Breakfast was in El Burgo Ranero.

By 10:30 the heat was getting problematic so we were very pleased to stumble upon Reliegos as we rounded a bend over a hill and we found the Ada Albergue in no time. We were the first in.

Wash, rinse, leather, repeat, etc and done.

This is a very nice albergue. Highly recommended. Our hospitalero was from Wales and volunteers here for a few weeks every year. The above photo shows him serenading the locals.

Now, cash is in short supply and we were down to our last 12 euros. No cash machine until Mansillas, 6 k into tomorrow, and Spanish shops don’t do credit cards. We tried to pay with a MasterCard in the breakfast cafe and you’d think the lady had never seen one before. She had a look of “why are you showing me a piece of pink plastic?”

Just after getting settled in H got the dreaded email from Edinburgh University informing him that his final degree grade had been posted. J and I stole his iPad and login whilst he looked on in pain. No worries. Let me introduce Mr Hamish Hutchings, BSc Hons, Upper Second. Oh yes…  we were sadly too broke to celebrate.

Following our bread and cheese lunch J got the same email. We stole her phone and we’re delighted to inform her that we were now in the presence of Ms Jennifer Logan MA Hons, Upper Second.

By now we had a mere 2 euros and 12 cents to our name so celebrations were restricted to a carton of fruit juice and a KitKat. Living it large.

Dinner was splendid. Pedro, the albergue owner, is an excellent cook and we had the best meal of the trip so far. Pedro provided a free bottle of wine and toasted the future of the new graduates. Very pleasant evening.

There were only 8 of us in that evening. No snorers!

Early to bed. Tomorrow is the trudge to Leon alongside a busy road.

Day 16 : Stats

Steve : Up late today. Breakfast was served from 6:30 and we made it around 7am. There had been a big rain storm in the night and I woke at one point to the sound of huge rain pellets hammering a corrugated metal roof. A lovely noise.

We were all a little low on enthusiasm when we set off, but we’d only got 20k to do today so… head down and get on with it.

We’d walked a whole 2.5 km before we came upon a sign advertising a veggie cafe serving healthy breakfasts.

We felt obliged to stop. We eat huge bowls of fruit salad and drink proper cappuccinos to the accompaniment of Johnny Cash blasting out over the town square.

An hour later, with very full bellies, and much improved moods, we were off.

J and I had an enthusiastic discussion as to whether Paul Simon was our favourite songwriter (dear reader, I have raised her in the way she should go…) which got us to Sahagun around 11am. It was getting hot.

Sahagun was taking down the bull barriers that lined the town streets. Apparently we’d just missed another bull running thing.

The casual animal torture that passes for cultural entertainment in northern Spain is baffling to us animal loving Brits. Maybe it’s a national blind spot – Americans have loony gun laws, Germans have no speed limits and we Brits have the House of Lords…

More Coke Zeros in Sahagun and we set off on the afternoon trudge long the roadside to Bercianos. Not a pleasant walk and far too hot.

My blisters are driving me nuts but, being a stubborn sort, my solution is just to keep going. We arrive at 1:25pm and the albergue opens at 1:30.

We join the queue and I have a small blood sugar related almost-collapse. We check in to this truly splendid albergue and do the shower thing. We stagger into the only bar we can find and each eat a large pizza. I feel much better. Back to the albergue for a sleep. I drift off listening to ‘The Big Sleep’, another BBC Radio 4 play. I wake up at random moments and realise I have no idea what’s going on. You cannot fall asleep during a Raymond Chandler story…

It’s so incredibly hot that we return to the bar, which for reasons we can’t determine, is quite cool and pleasant. We watch the Simpsons dubbed in Spanish and zone out.

This albergue is a donativo, run by volunteers on an entirely free basis. It really is a lovely old building and seems quite popular with the seasoned Camino veterans.

As with most donativos there is a communal meal in the evening.  A veggie option is provided and all us veggies sit together to make life easier for the hospitaleros. The table is an eclectic group, us Scots, an Austrian, three Germans, a Canadian, a Spaniard, an Italian and a young lady from England – who was doing the Camino following a 2 year stint in South Sudan with Save The Children Fund and a bicycle trip from London to Hong Kong. Like you do…

The delight of communal dinners is that you are forced to meet your fellow travellers.  The albergue sensibly has no WiFi and the hospitaleros go to some efforts to make the peregrinos talk to one another.

Following dinner we all gather in the back garden in a big circle and join hands.  The lead hospitalero asks us to go around the circle, give our names, and, if we want, state why we’re on the Camino.

I say that I want to prove I’m not dead yet and I want to do something with my daughter, and I add, with a lump in my throat, that I want to remember my infirm son back home.  Definitely another CALS* moment…

Others give diverse reasons, others stay quiet.  The circle completes and our leader instructs us to hug each other in a meaningful manner. Yes, I know it sounds corny, but written down on a screen, so does every other significant moment in your life… I loved it.

They specialise in spectacular sunsets around here, and, in fact, the main photo atop this blog was taken at this very albergue last year on Jen’s first Camino trip.

So, around 10pm we go to the highest point in the village to watch the sun set. We sit next to some splendid Australian ladies who are celebrating their retirement with a Camino walk.

That same sun, that only a few hours ago was trying to kill us, finally hits the horizon.

The best albergue experience so far…

*Camino Adjusted Lachrymosity Syndrome

Day 15 : Stats

Steve : Way back in Zubiri we saw a poster called ‘The Vegetarian Way’. On it was Alburgue San Bruno, in Moratinos. This would be an extra 3km beyond the Brierley recommended stop at Terradillos de los Templarios, but we were craving something other than cheese rolls for our sustenance. Thus, a 30km walk awaits.

Jen wakes up extremely grumpy. Years of experience tells me that this is not a Good Thing but there’s nothing anyone, particularly me, can do about it. We are up at 5am and make a decent breakfast of scrambled eggs and fruit bought from the lovely air conditioned supermarket the night before.

Off we go…

Off we go, approaching the 17km stretch of nothing before the tiny village of Calzadilla de la Cueza. We’d been warned to make sure we had enough water and energy bars.

I rather liked the nothing. I put on my headphones and worked my way through Paul Simon and the Afro-Celts. I was flying along. We made good progress before the sun came up.

A dark an ominous sky was to our right, to the north. We hoped it would stay there…

It’s hard to convey the scale of this place. It’s big and flat and nothing.

About half way through the 17km was a rest stop.  Some wit had added this graffiti to the sign.

Her Grumpiness was bringing up the rear. We made it to a cafe in Calzadilla. There’s a dip in the plain. You’re walking, walking, walking and then out of nowhere appears the town.

A spinach and potato tortilla at 9am was most welcome.

Then the heat starts and the trudge begins. Through Ledigos…

…where J hops in a taxi to accompany a Canadian girl who has ground to a halt with very bad blisters. The idea was to take the taxi to the albergue at Terradillos, and J would wait for us there. Our Canadian friend decided to go to Sahagun, another 10k or so, so Jen exited at Terradillos and waited for H and me.

More Coke and apple pie and we were on our way on the final 3k to a veggie albergue in Moratinos.

We stagger in to San Bruno around 1pm, hot and bothered. The Italian couple who run the place are lovely and within an hour we’d done the washing of us and our clothes and we spent the rest of the day lounging around with our feet in a cold-water pool.

I had some big blisters so Jen did surgery and got to inflict pain on her father which improved her mood considerably.

The only other residents were a French Canadian couple who had walked from Montpellier and were setting a storming pace of 30-40k per day. Dinner was served at 7pm. Tagliatelle pesto, done properly, and a big salad. Good conversation, swapping traveller’s tales and comparing notes.

Early to bed, us three were the only inhabitants of our 18 bed room. A good day. Even Jen cheered up…

Day 14 : Stats

Steve : Some people go to great lengths to avoid the heat of the day. I got up around 3:30am to do my old-man-goes-to-the-loo-in-the-middle-of-the-night trip and someone else was up, packing their bag for the day.

We got up with everyone else and we’re on the road at 5-something am. Today is a short and boring day. 19 km to Carrion, almost all of it along the road.

We had a first rate breakfast at Poblacion de Campos in a rather upmarket albergue as it opened at 6:30am. We must look for more such albergues!

A second breakfast at a fun hippy albergue followed in Villarmentero de Campos.

Then, heads down, suncream on, headphones in, off we go along the roadside.

We arrive in Carrion around 11am. We have beaten the worst of the heat!

Our albergue, a convent just inside the town, called Santa Clara, is very nice.

We have a room with three beds and lots of room. Excellent.

Following the rinse, lather, repeat washing cycle H and I go out for lunch whilst J falls asleep. We find a proper restaurant with white shirted waitresses and air conditioning. We have a veggie version of the peregrino lunch special and are well satisfied. At the next table are half a dozen men who we think are the guitarists for a concert that is happening in the evening. They have the correct fingernails and – dead giveaway – one of them has a guitar. the leader of the group, an American, also has a very small kitten in the top pocket of his white shirt. Every now and then we hear a miaow and a tiny leg pops out to bat at something.

It’s now very very hot. I bought another pair of socks from a specialist hiking store. The lady tells me they are a good Camino choice. I hope she is right.

Back to the albergue for a sleep, difficult in the heat.

In the evening we go to the guitar concert in a converted church.

The American man in the white shirt in the restaurant is, indeed, the leader of the guitar school that is housed in this church.  I ask after the cat and he tells me that it died.

I relay this to Jen who says that sick feral cats are very common in Spain.  It looks like our American friend was trying to save one small kitten and had, sadly, failed in his efforts.

The guitar concert was excellent.

Back to the albergue where H made some banana and Huel pancakes and finally got to use the Huel he’d carried across half of Spain.

A final wander around outside the albergue, where H decides to do some slack-wire…

And then to bed.

Tomorrow is a long 30km+ day with the first 17 being the longest stretch on the Camino without water. Right!

Day 13 : Stats

Steve : Last night was very hot. The Castrojeriz albergue is one big room and it didn’t cool down until well after midnight. Not too much snorting and I reckon I’ve got the pilgrim way of being able to sleep through anything pretty much sussed.

Bags loaded and out by 5:30am.

Castrojeriz lies in a valley between two high plains. The hope was that we’d reach the other plain on the west side of the valley by sunrise. We made it with a few minutes to spare.

We walked the high plain…

…and then descended into Itero de la Vega.

Another cafe stop at 8:30.

The landscape was changing. The fields were larger and flatter and stretched to the horizon.

It was getting very hot. We crossed the Tierra de Campos, through Boadilla del Camino…

…and walked into the scorching town of Fromista around 1pm.

Fromista is rail yards and canals and long low buildings holding who knows what. The albergue was just off the main square. We arrived, did the pilgrim thing of shower, clothes wash and sleep for an hour or so. We Scots cannot handle this heat.

The 25km had taken their toll. Our feet and legs were fine but the heat had exhausted us. We sat around. H and I fiddled about with tech and backed up the thousand or so pictures that I’d take so far. Dinner was in a cafe off a rather tired looking strip: tagliatelle with mushrooms times three. As we were sitting outside a considerable wind blew in from the east. We were grateful for the cooling effect but in the end we had to retreat into the cafe. We watched a rather good basketball game on the bar TV.

We sloped off to bed at around 9pm…

Day 12 : Stats

Hamish: we are now roughly one third of the way through our trip having walked a mighty 271.9km! We only this morning walked into our third and final district before entering Galicia (don’t ask me the name as I have forgotten and the wifi is being unkind).

(Edit: the district in question is in fact ‘Palencia’ after having finally connected to the Albergue wifi.)

We have roughly 426k to go and we are all slowly getting better at early starts and early evenings. I admit that I am by far the slowest to learn about early starts… This morning was the second that we managed to get out and walking before the sun rose and the first that we had a rather spectacular view as the sun crested the horizon! (A sight I admit I haven’t seen for a long while).

The tiny Spanish towns are a sight to behold and every one leaves me wanting to buy up a derelict house and move in immediately! I fear I may be romanticising them somewhat. Nonethetheles, I would not be surprised if this were to happen…

Yesterday, as we wandered around the beautiful town of Castrojeriz, we came across a Silencio, something quite surreal and very beautiful. It was an empty house, filled with some beautiful photos and decorated with such care and attention. Each room was laid out precisely and the garden was well tended sporting a tranquil pond with running water, a single congregation, unlit church which had been excavated into the mountain and some unshaded seats in the garden proper for those who draw strength from direct sunlight. This silencio was based around the simple rule “don’t say anything”. After many days of constant company and many many ‘hola‘ and ‘buen camino‘, it was such a peaceful change to hear no voices and sit, tranquil and cool, listening to the sound of running water.

All in all the first third of the trip has been a great success! We have been rained on, nearly lost our bag a couple of times, walked in the blistering heat and eaten more tortilla than I ever thought possible. We are still standing, and somehow smiling however, so we shall carry on and see what the next 420km brings us!

Steve : Another beautiful day. In an effort to beat the sun we got up at 5:30am when the air was cool and damp. Out on the trail by 6am.

A short climb out of town and we were on the meseta again. I know I keep saying this but this place really is magical. Last night we met a couple of Frenchmen who had walked from Grenoble and were doing 40+ km/day. They arrived in Hornillos around 7pm and were going to keep going. It was a full moon and they wanted to cross the meseta by moonlight. What an excellent idea.

The sun rose at our backs around 6:30. This place looks like The Shire from Lord of The Rings.

A breakfast stop around 9am in Hontonas.

We passed through ruined churches…

…along perfectly smooth empty roads…

…and finally saw the town of Castrojeriz and it’s ancient hilltop castle.

Today is a short day of around 20km and we were in the albergue by 11:30.

It was getting proper Spanish hot.

We couldn’t quite suss out the town of Castrojeriz. Like a lot of the villages through which we walked there were many ‘Se Vendre’ (‘For Sale’) signs.

Similarly for this small town of population 500, according to Brierley. It looked like some money had been spent on Castrojeriz. There was a rather good museum of the Camino that we visited and the street furniture of road signs and lampposts were all new and of interesting design.

Half way up the high street (the whole town is strung out along a single road) was a house with a painted bicycle outside. ‘La Casa del Silencio’ read a sign hanging on the bike – ‘The House of Silence’.

We entered in to find an entire house filled with art, books, music and no-one around. It was really lovely. We must have spent the best part of an hour looking at the art and drinking in the atmosphere.

Grade One Hippy and all the better for it. If you’re in Castrojeriz pay it a visit.

Now, we’re still sending on a bag each day because we’re basically lazy. Each morning for the last week we’d attach a courier envelope, with 5 euros, to our bag of stuff and it would automagically show in the albergue that evening. But in Hornillos we’d not read the small print (we’d never read the small print) and we didn’t know we had to phone the courier to arrange pickup. We thought that the couriers just visited all the albergues and picked up whatever was there. So, we found ourselves in Castrojeriz minus clean clothes and the other pilgrim essentials that we were too lazy to carry.

Oliver, the immensely helpful German ‘hospitalero’, who actually ran the hostel, sorted it out for us. Our bag showed up around 3pm and we felt very stupid and grateful.

Dinner that evening was a big pasta-and-thing concocted by J and H. We shared it with Tom, an American gent from Florida, who was good company.

Early to bed as tomorrow is a long 25km and we need to be up to beat the sun.

Day 11 : Stats

Steve : A long walk out of Burgos, through the suburbs.  Today I’m trying my Merrell sandals.  Let’s see how they do.

And then through Tarjados and Rabe and up onto the Meseta.  This place is magical…

Panoramas

21 km done through the best countryside so far.  My feet survived a day in sandals.  All is well….

Day 10 : Stats

Steve : The Camino is supposed to be what you make it.  You do what you want in your way.  It’s your Camino.

That said – you want to do it ‘properly’, and ‘properly’ should not involve getting on a bus.  More on that later.

My feet were giving me hell. 21.3 km to do today.

Past the route markers and through Azofra and Ciruena…

..with the compulsory  breakfast stop of strong coffee, potato tortilla and an orange juice.

It was getting properly hot, at least for this Scotsman.  As a former skin cancer patient I always keep full covered, which I reckon is the best idea anyway.  At the end of this day H’s legs were traffic light red.

We arrived in Santo Domingo and had a crisis meeting.

We’d lost two days because of the British Airways IT failure. And our original Plan A required us to claw back a day at some point in the trip.  The idea was to take three 20-ish km days and do them in two 30-ish km slogs.  But our experience of the last few days has told us that 30 km is too much.

So, to make our flights on July 3rd, and to have something of a good time in Santiago (after all, the point of the exercise!) we decided on Plan E…

• Take the 14:58 bus to Burgos, cutting out three days of walking.  Jen tells us that we’re not missing much in these three days, in fact today’s walk was too much road and not enough country.  Looking at the map, if we were to skip any section this would be the one to choose.
• This would get back the lost BA days and might give us enough time to do something that both J and H really wanted to do – go on from Santiago to Finisterre ‘the end of the world’ on the Spanish Atlantic coast.

So that was our plan.  We got the bus and went to Burgos.  And we hope to make it to Finisterre.

I took no pictures of this sad departure from plan.

As the air-conditioned and completely splendid coach pulled out of Santo Domingo for the 70km trip to Burgos we were conflicted.  And rather startled at the speed of the bus! After all these days of being a pedestrian it was rather a shock to roar along the road – the pilgrim trail follows the main road for much of the trip – and pass all the Camino route markers.  In an hour we were there in Burgos. It felt like cheating.

We booked into the enormous municipal albergue.  Very modern and very splendid. And very cheap, 5 euros each.

Jen performed surgery on my feet, with sharp scissors and a safety pin that had been sterilised with a cigarette lighter that we’d bought for the occasion, plus a lot of tissue paper to catch what Jen refers to as ‘blister juice’.  I put on my sandals and felt grim.

Somewhere along the way Jen had picked up some bed bugs.  Jen greatly loves all kinds of animals but bed bugs aren’t in the approved list.  They bring out the screaming heebie-jeebies. So she hot-washed everything – clothes, sleeping bags, the lot. And wrapped her backpack in a couple of plastic bags to be left out in the sun.  The little beggars stood no chance.

Burgos has a truly magnificent cathedral.  The albergue is just up the street from it, so we took our broken feet for a small walk and went to see what we could see.

There was to be a pilgrim’s mass in the cathedral at 19:30, so we scrubbed up nice and went along.  This was a very different affair to Los Arcos. A real priest showed up and conducted the service. Being neither a Catholic nor a Spanish speaker I didn’t really have a clue what was going on but it was nice to watch other pilgrims for whom this was clearly a meaningful experience.

After that we found a restaurant that had a good vegetarian selection and we splurged.  J and I continued our discussion on liturgy and authenticity.  Whereas I rather like the Burgos pilgrim’s mass, she thought it was totally lacking in sincerity.

Maybe Jen will fill us in on her ideas on ritual and religion at some point.

Back to the albergue, just in time to miss a thunderstorm.

A few words of advice….

As the Beach Boys put it in the classic 1971 album, Surf’s Up, you need to take good care of your feet,  …

Day 9 : Stats