The Half-Fast Camino Walking* Club

Friday, June 24, 2016
Sahagun
Day 24

Right next to our hotel, this very old building stood. I didn’t see a plaque or any indication of why it had been allowed to continue standing.  It was a very visible reminder of old building styles in Spain, and looked quite different from all of the brick and stucco buildings around it.

When setting up my schedule, I built a “rest day” into it every week.  Besides rest, I planned to use the day to do laundry and other needed tasks.  Sahagun, though a somewhat larger town, foiled me. There was no laundromat in the town.

The hotel  receptionist suggested that I try using the machines in the aubergue across the street. That sounded like a good idea to me. I could go over and wash clothes early, before the next batch of pilgrims arrived in town.

So at 10 am, I was sitting on the steps of the aubergue with my laundry, waiting for it to open. Opening time was announced as 10 am on a large sign posted right by the front  door.) 10 am came and went. 10:30. 11:00.

By this time I was getting nervous. We could have the hotel wash our clothes, but it would be much more expensive and we had to turn the clothes in by noon. At 11:45, I gave up on the aubergue and went in and turned our clothes over to the hotel, which promised to have them done “by 9:00.”

The aubergue finally opened its door at around 12:15, while James and I were sitting on the terrace in front of our hotel having a drink. No one I asked seemed to know the  reason for the delay in opening. We saw lots of early arriving pilgrims from 10 am to noon shake their heads in bewilderment and then move on when they got no response to pounding on the door. At least we just had laundry troubles, not housing concerns!  Another lazy day for us.

Steps Today: 4,017

Thursday, June 23, 2016
Calzadilla de la Cueza to Puerta de Sahagun
Day 23

Relative to the very small towns in which we had been staying, Sahagun was decent sized. Lots of public art, such as this pilgrim in metal.

We had booked a taxi to take us to Sahagun, but the driver didn’t show up at the agreed hour, so the hotel owner drove us there.

We were both tired. We had long siestas and then dinner.  James ordered spaghetti, but when it came it had egg in it, so he wouldn’t eat it. Amazingly, spaghetti–the so-typical dish of Italy–is almost always among the choices on the Pilgrim’s Menu for the first course. I guess it is there because it is inexpensive to make and filling, but perhaps also because it is a popular choice.

James orders it fairly frequently. He always asks what is in it first, but this time the waiter didn’t say that it came with visible boiled egg bits in it. The waiter graciously swapped out the spaghetti for a different dish.

These two acts of kindness by hotel staff along the way–one by the hotel owner offering to drive us himself and then the waiter swapping dishes–are representative  of the very nice staff we have met all through our journey.

I took almost no steps today, and my feet were happy.  Even so, I couldn’t help but hear the Freddy Fender classic running through my head, “Wasted days and wasted nights….”

Steps Today: 2,657

Wednesday, June  22, 2016
Carrion de los Condes  to Calzadilla de la Cueza
Day 22

After our long walk the previous day, we definitely wanted an easier day. Again no bus to where we wanted to go, but there was a bus to a town further along the Camino, so we took that. Although I don’t like backtracking, that is what we had to do. The bus didn’t leave until noon, so I used the morning for errands and to explore Carrion a bit.

I had to go to three ATMs, then eventually return back to the first one before  I could extract any funds. It was like a comedy of errors–ATM style. Nothing seemed to work in Carrion. I couldn’t buy our bus tickets on the first try, either. While waiting to be able to buy the tickets, I popped into a couple of small shops and took some photos. Eventually I was able to buy the bus tickets.  All the while James rested up; his feet have been bothering him.

Once we got to the further town, we had to find a taxi to take us back to Calzadilla, where we had reservations for the night.

In the town of Terradillos, we stopped at an aubergue for a drink and to catch a taxi. I thought the wall in the aubergue (see photo above) fairly well summed up what we had been seeing on the Meseta: agriculture combined with great religious  faith.

Steps Today: 6,141

For photos of Carrion, see June 22.

 

Tuesday June 21, 2016
Fromista to Carrion de los Condes
Day 21

This was a day with many unusual sights. We saw teepees, but never got an explanation as to why they were there. (They’re shown in one of my map books, so they have been there for a while.) We stopped to rehydrate at one albergue and found ourselves in a magical menagerie garden with geese, chickens, and even donkeys joining the pilgrims for a snack.

Walking down a long, straight stretch, we saw ahead a car parked  beside the road. As we got closer, we saw that a gentleman of advanced years was dispensing something to passing pilgrims. It was almonds. If he had time between pilgrims, he would crack  them for you. Otherwise, a handful of nuts for your pocket.

The girl ahead of me got a kiss  on the check. I got the kiss, both cracked and uncracked nuts, and a mini-muffin. James got uncracked nuts. Along the Camino you sometimes find spontaneous generosity and kindness like this.

Another day with no intermediate bus stop. We started out walking, thinking maybe to catch a taxi when we got too tired. In the end, we walked the full way, with two stops for drinks and a longish lunch break, during which we chatted with two Americans. It was a very hot day, but the road surface was great. All in all, an interesting day despite the sameness of the countryside.

Steps Today: 31,978

For photos, see June 21

Monday, June 20, 2016
Castrojeriz to Fromista
Day 20

When we arrived in Fromista, the church door was open, so we immediately went in. St. Martin Church was a lovely, pure Romanesque church.  James Michener wrote about his love for Romanesque and how he preferred it to Gothic. I wondered if this was the church he wrote about, but it wasn’t. He would have loved it.

Facing a 24 km leg, James’s feet hurting, and no bus service to/from an intermediate  town, we elected to take a taxi to Fromista. I ended up being very pleased with this decision since it allowed us to tour St. Martin’s, across the Plaza from our hotel. We had a lovely (too expensive) a la carte  lunch on the terrace facing the church. Lots of problems with the Internet. It is just not robust enough in these small towns to support lots of photographs, and I get tired of fighting it.

Steps Today: 4,508

Sunday, June 19
Hornillos (Isar) to Castrojeriz
Day 19

These small towns up on the Meseta are almost ghost towns, with very small populations. Without the influx of business from pilgrims, some of them probably would be ghost towns. This was the day of Angel the Truffle Hunter and the white butterflies. The butterflies fluttered all around us, and sometimes I shortened my step to avoid running into one.  I’ve seen them elsewhere, but not in such numbers as here.

We walked from Hornillos to Hontanas.  A nice, cool day, but a very rocky road. My left pinkie toe was really complaining. In Hontanas, we had lunch, then I asked the barkeep  to phone for a taxi for me. A guy sitting at the bar offered to drive me. When he saw James, he said, “Oh, there are two of you.” Clearly he had been thinking he was offering a ride to a single woman traveling alone.

I am not sure if I would have accepted his offer if I had been alone. The Camino is by and large safe, but still….Once in his car, he introduced himself as Angel. He rapidly said that he was a truffle hunter. He offered to show us his truffles and his house. I probably would have declined, but James had heard of the high value and rarity of truffles and wanted to take a look. With James along, I didn’t say anything, and we stopped at Angel’s house. He showed us a plastic container with truffles, and indicated more containers in his refrigerator. He estimated that he had 2000€ worth of truffles there. Since truffles have a very short shelf life, he needed to get his truffles to market quickly.

I asked him how he found the truffles, since I had read that pigs were outstanding truffle hunters. Angel said that he used a dog, who was a top truffle hunter, and such a dog was highly valuable.

His house abuts a beautiful ruined church, which he said is his now. Angel had a dog with him in his car, not the truffle hunter, he said, but Cherie, “his wife.”  I think in offering to take me to Castrojeriz he was scouting out a potential foreign wife. Anyway, he offered us a ride, and an interesting story, so we were content.  I wish I had taken a photo of Angel, but I didn’t.

Steps Today: 20,750

For photos, see June 19: Hornillos to Hostanas

Saturday, June 18, 2016
Burgos to Hornillos (Isar)
Day 18

Leaving Burgos, we walked along the street on the high side of the cathedral. From that perspective, the cathedral’s spires were gorgeously  outlined against tbe blue sky. Our departure took us by the University of Burgos, which looked to be a thoroughly modern campus. Once out in the countryside, we saw how rocky yet fertile the soil is. And with less to look at, we had time to observe some things more  closely.

All along The Way we have seen discarded objects. Mostly it has been hiking boots and athletic shoes, but once we even saw an abandoned metal suitcase out in the middle of nowhere. At first, the discarded items were usually left on a roadside marker or pile of stones, but folks are getting more creative.

We saw a couple of variations of hanging shoes on this day. The first one was as we walked through the university, and I suspect students might have been responsible for that one. But the tableau above is quite far out in the countryside. I couldn’t help thinking of the  Clint Eastwood film, Hang ‘Em High. I think a number  of those “spaghetti  westerns” of his were shot here in Spain.

We planned to walk to Tardajos and take a bus from there. The hotel receptionist in Burgos had told us that was possible, after phoning the bus station. It tuned out that the information wasy wrong. No buses served Tardajos.

We asked about taxis, but  they wanted 30 € for 10 kms, so we walked  the whole way.  This was one the few times  we did the whole distance, 21 kms, double our usual amount. Camino conditions were good–a cool day, a relatively  flat road, and a good road surface except for the last steep decline  into Hornillos, when I used my walking sticks.  We actually stayed in a nice Casa rural in Isar, an even smaller village not far from Hornillos.

Steps Today: 37,430

For photos of our walk, see Burgos to Hornillos

Friday, June 17
Day 17
Burgos

Burgos was cold and rainy for our entire visit. Professor Henry Higgins may teach Eliza Doolittle that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains, but our experience is that it all lands on Burgos.

The town’s squares are anything but, all being eccentrically  shaped. We walked through many of them multiple times–El Cid Plaza, Freedom Plaza, Plaza Mayor, etc.–but none of them looked like a traditional central city Spanish plaza. Burgos certainly has its own character!  I have linked some more photos  of Burgos’s treasures.

Today was errands day.  We spent the morning tracking down a laundromat (not easy; Burgos doesn’t seem to have many of them, despite being a city).

In the afternoon, we went back to the music store, where James exchanged his full-sized guitar for a smaller, traveling one that will fit in his backpack. Then he went back to the hotel before his new guitar got rained on, while I carried on trying, unsuccessfully, to solve my camera problems by visiting a camera store and then a phone store. After  wasting multiple hours over several days trying to fix this issue, I finally gave up.

With James bummed out about having to give up his full-sized guitar and me grumpy about not being able to use my camera, we went out to dinner to change the mood via ordering roast pig- a specialty at the restaurant we went to–and downing a pitcher of sangria. Not a bad way to end the day.

Steps Today: 13,547

More photos can be viewed at: Burgos II

Thursday, June 16, 2016
Burgos
Day 16

Burgos Cathedral is the third largest in Spain, with only the cathedrals in Seville and Toledo being larger. Besides the central nave and aisles, there are many, many side chapels (18, I think).

As one guide book said, any one of these chapels, transferred to a museum in the USA, would be considered a masterwork of the collection. Here, all crowded together, it becomes, as James remarked, “overwhelming.” So much beauty crowded into such a relatively small area!

The Cathedral also boasts a two-story cloister, something I have never seen before. I was particularly impressed with the cupolas and ceilings. Like the one pictured here, several of them are spectacular.

Burgos is also crowded with mementos of El Cid, an interesting hero since he fought for both Christian kings and Muslim overlords. El Cid is buried in the cathedral, and we took a photo of his gravestone.

After breakfast, we headed out for the guitar store. On the way, we saw an open church and popped in. Saint Lesmes, whose lovely mausoleum is right there in the center of the church, is the patron saint of Burgos. At the guitar shop James tried out many guitars, then selected a full-size Alhambra. He went back to the hotel while I went searching for an Internet cafe or something similar, still trying to solve my camera problem. In the afternoon off to the Cathedral for an extended visit. We had hoped to go to a musical performance in the evening but we were just too tired.

Steps Today: 13,179

For additional photos, go to June 16, 2016: Burgos.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Day 15
Belorado to Burgos

The road between Belorado and Espinosa del Camino was good. We had been extraordinarily blessed with good weather over the past few days–cool, overcast, and windy. So windy, in fact, that James employed a bandana to keep the grit out of his still-congested mouth and noise.

This day showed one of the glitches of our walk-ride Half-Fast plan. We walked halfway, but then there was no bus to our next end-of-stage stopping point, San Juan de Ortega.  So we elected to take the bus all the way to Burgos, where we were spending the night anyway.

At lunchtime, before we caught the bus, there occurred  a small Camino drama. Two girls came into the restaurant where we were eating, one of them crying. They tried to explain to the restaurant head what had happened, but they couldn’t surmount the language barrier.

I was called in to translate, which I did. The girls had been ripped off by an unscrupulous albergue (hostal) guy, who also threatened to sic the police on them. The restaurant owner was able to assure them not to worry, though he was unable to help them recover  the money the guy had taken from them.

Once we were on the bus, the rain started pelting down, and we felt lucky to be out of it. By the time we reached Burgos, cool had turned  to cold, the start of an unseasonably  cold snap. In Burgos, our first city since Pamplona, we did some shopping for items we needed–velcro, skin lotion, a cable to connect my camera to my tablet. This was my second (unsuccessful) attempt to solve this technology  black hole.

Steps Today: 21,976

To see photos from along the way, go to Belorado to Espinosa del Camino.