A clear sky greets us while the north star is the only light that reminds us that we are just another speck in a huge mostly unknown universe. What is known to us is the track we’ve been walking on was used by the Romans over 2000 years ago (and in much the same condition) the main highway alongside providing us with the modern contrast, the past as functional today as the present. We pass [...]
Left our little village at what is now our regular time of 6.30am. For 6kms we travelled on the white path, but next to the highway, the sound of the few cars unknowingly camouflaging the sound of my loud unattractive voice exercises. We soon reached the village of Carrion then on to a wide pathway and away from the traffic, 17kms walk without any place to rest The wind blew at our backs and with [...]
Today we continued along the ‘Meseta’ (I remember in Geography at school talking about ‘Mesas’ - small plateaus - a bit late, but, now I know where the word comes from) through the village of Fromista where we saw a couple of unusually designed churches. One, which I will post was built in the eleventh century and is one of the purist Romanesque churches in Spain. We walked past a few pilgrims (probably at our [...]
An ‘hola’ to old companions and ‘top of the morning’ to a new Irish woman companion who like us is very smart or has a bad back, having her bag brought for her to her new digs. But soon on to more serious business, a very long high hill was laying in wait and Corrie who had an hours sleep due to a fever was not excited about it. She made it, as steep as [...]
It seemed that the same clouds cooled us and the same cuckoo birds told us the time as we took our no longer secret creaks with us up on to a more defined meseta. The hills faded further into the background as the undulations now flattened out into vast plains hugging our forever winding pathway. Along this path we met a keen German walker who showed a lot of interest in Parkinsons as a friend [...]
We walked into a deserted Panchos (where we had tapas the day before) at 7.00pm for a snack of Raciones (we’ve got into the Spanish way of large lunch and small snacks for dinner) and asked why the long bar was empty. Senora told us: “the Spanish shop till eight then they’ll come, but I like it quiet”. So an hour alone with her and her staff (couldn’t do this without Corrie’s excellent Spanish) waiting [...]
Sunlight crept into our room to wake us up for the first time and looking out on to quaint wrought iron balconies like ours and a lantern-lit Spanish street did not have us looking for our walking poles. Instead a quiet interlude with our German and Austrian companions and a stroll around town was enough of a walk today and a chance to prevent too many leg and foot complaints in the weeks ahead. It [...]
An intimate time was held in the small and only bar in town (a Spanish bar has a bar selling mostly wine, beer and soft drinks with some tapas, cakes and croissants with an eating area where you have meals as described in an earlier post).Twenty five walkers were the only guests of dad and his two sons as groups of Germans, French, Spanish, Americans and us spent some hours swapping stories and talking 'walking'. [...]
It’s wet and windy as we leave Belorado, no lights in the sky but as luck would have it we had a pilgrim in front of us with a light on his forehead, not that he had reached nirvana, it was just a torch, so we followed him, the early morning star. At least it was cool walking through the ubiquitous fields of wheat, the third village two hours out fed us with enough tortilla [...]
A late morning start had us on the road in daylight for once, a strange feeling as though we were late, but we had organised only a short walk for today. Called into the next village after we left Redecillo del Camino where we met up with a Dutchman who was simply enjoying walking in retirement. We loved simply strolling through some more villages, (they are often only 5kms apart), taking time to explore, [...]
