Walking the Camino

It was a rather sleepless night in Reliegos. A dance/rave party set up one street away, and it pumped out its loud music all night. And I mean all night, it was still going at 7.15am when we walked past it in the dark before dawn. For people that had spent all day walking, and needed a good nights sleep, it was less than considerate.

It was the darkest ever we have started our day, with many pilgrims using headlight torches to see.

We knew we had only 24km to walk, and that we were walking to a nice hotel room we had already booked in Leon. We got breakfast in a bar in Mansilla de las Mulas, which we would not have even seen if it wasn’t by chance seeing someone walking away from it with a bag of bread. It looked dark, and closed, but on closer inspection it was open and busy. Spanish retailing for you again, lots of pilgrims would have walked 100 metres away on the camino, and never known anything was open in town.

We got back on the road following the N-120 road, which we have been following or crossing for many days. Later in the morning we found an irrigation channel flowing with nice cold water – too good an opportunity to soak our feet.

We found a shelter at Arcahueja with a water fountain, and had lunch. We crossed a busy road that had previously been a dangerous crossing for pilgrims, that now had a nice new bridge.

We made it into central Leon, at an early 3:30pm.

Where we are on the Camino - at Leon

Spanish dance/rave party still going at 7:20am (still dark). There seems to be no noise enviroment laws in Spain!

Greg soaking his feet in the cold water of the irrigation channel

A Pilgrim statue in Mansilla de las Mulas

A new bridge for pilgrims, replacing a previously dangerous road crossing out of Leon

Last week, just before we started our long, hot trudge into Burgos, we sat and had a drink at a little village and chatted with a young Brazillian woman. She told us that a lot of Brazillians do the Camino, mostly because of Paulo Coelho’s first book, The Pilgrimage.

We had our usual whinge about pilgrims who wake up ridiculously early and walk for hours in the dark, and she made the most insightful comment we have heard about the Camino, which sums it up perfectly.

‘The Camino is like life – some people race through it, some people take their time, but we all end up in the same place.’

Another 30.5km day – 8am to 6pm walking

We left Sahagun at dawn (8am now) , and after wandering around the town centre of Sahagun, we found no shops open. It frustrates us the spanish attitude to retailing. In some little villages you will find an enterprising retailer who opens his shop early, and its packed with pilgrims buying supplies, food, cafe and more. However in the larger towns there is often nothing open before 9am, well after most pilgrims have left. So a hundred or so pilgrims left Sahagun this morning without any supplies for what for most was going to be a long day, walking past closed shops.

We needed to walk 30km + today, because they was a place to stay at 17.8km, (to short, putting us behind) or do 30.5km, and stay at Reliegos. We did 10km to Bercianos del Real Camino and did look for a shop that was meant to be there, but no luck, we continued on. It was cold and overcast, but no rain.

Another 7.5km got us to El Burgo Ranero, where we found a very helpful english speaking girl at the church who stamped our credentials and directed us to the Plaza Mayor (main town square), where there was a shop, and a fuente (water fountain), and seats, and the sun had come out to shine on us.

We got out our blue bowl and did our feet soaking in cold water, knowing we had 13km more to do. After a nice lunch, we headed of towards Reliegos, knowing there was nothing to stop at in between.

We met on the way Otto, a Nuclear Physist from Germany, how had restarted his Camino from Sahagun, which he had stopped at a couple of years ago. It was a long drag up to Reliegos, with our feet aching well by the time we got there. We were lucky again, we got in just, with the hospitalerro turning away 5 bike riders after we got in. However we did note that another walker was let in later, confirming that they treat walkers more favorably than bike riders.

We got a bed in a big room with mattresses on the floor, and had dinner at the local Bar Gil with Otto.

the long 13km long stretch to Reliegos

the overflow sleeping room at Reliegos (the main rooms with bunks were already full)

our pilgrim credentials - we need these to get into albergues, and get them stamped at every place we stay