Monthly Archives: September 2014

Ok, this was an easy walk today. On the way out of VillaFranca we passed a statue of a pilgrim. It was quite a dull day, but this keeps the sun off our backs and makes for easier walking.

We planned to take it easy before the ascent up the mountain to 1350 meters tomorrow and it will be the last major mountain we have to climb. The path followed along side the rio Valcarce through a valley most of the day so it twisted and turned and went through a couple of small villages.

A quite country road

We even encountered the occasional cow wandering down the Main Street of a village.

Is that a cow?

Yep, we have a cow

We arrived into Ambasmestas earlier than planned and the hotel let us check in early. We had lunch at the hotel Restaurant, and it was one of the best meals we have had so far. We are in Galicia, and the food has improved.

After lunch we just sat around the village enjoying the day.

Jan sunning herself

If we want, we now have the option of riding a horse to the next destination.

Sounds like a good idea!

We went to the local church last night for Vespers , it appears to have been built during Roman times.  The local monks conducted the service using gregorian chants in Latin, as well as providing a pilgrims blessing in multiple languages.

Our start this morning was not as smooth as we planned, my (Russ) hiking pole was missing, PANIC.  The last I remembered having it was when we arrived. We checked at reception, and it was not there. After breakfast I checked again, and asked them to look behind the door, and there it was. Janice claimed she prayed for it to appear.

3 weeks on the road. Today, we thought, would be a leisurely 17km. Ha!

We stopped at Foncebadon, a small village for a break, and had the nicest orange cake since arriving, freshly made today.

We ascended the remaining 400 metres through Foncebadan to Cruz de Ferro, a cross on the top of the mountain where you symbolically leave a stone and your burden behind.

After this we traversed two more mountains, over some very rocky trails.

We arrived in El Acebo, a very pretty little village up in the Leon Mountains, and have been spending the afternoon resting up.

Our next stop is Ponferrada and the World Cycling Championships are in town, and all accommodation is booked up. Never mind the Camino will provide!

Another rest day, we caught a taxi to Sahagun and then a train to Leon. While I still can’t walk straight, Janice is holding up well with only one minor blister on one toe.  We had a bit of a look around Leon in the vicinity of the hotel and visited the cathedral (twice) the second time for mass.

Jan having coffee opposite the cathedral

Leon Cathedral

Street scene in Leon

Leon is a bustling city, first city like this we have come across. We have a couple of days here before walking on.

We had a bit of a sleep in and a leisurely breakfast as we had decided that a rest day or two is required. A blood blister on the sole of my right foot is to painful to walk on.

Sore foot

The Albergue/Hotel we stayed at was very nice, the people were helpful. We had a communal dinner last night with a people from South Africa, USA and Australia. The Albergue had even managed to arrange a birthday cake for one of the ladies from South Africa.  We went on to our next destination by taxi.

We stayed at a converted Monastery, and I had booked us a very nice room in the old part of the building. It still had original stone walls and wooden beams, but with all the mod cons.

Dinner in the Monastery

Pilgrim sculpture

We started the day before day break with a couple of coffees, and set off across the Meseta again. Our village was in a valley and we walked along a fairly flat area for a while, the sun rose behind us.

Sunrise on the Meseta

We had a sign of things to come with the double rainbow over the hills.

we eventually had to walk up and out of the valley, the incline was 12%  so it was quite steep.  A bit of a long steep walk.

Onward and upward

What goes up must go down, the decline was 18% ,  not so long, but quite steep.

We broke the day up into 3rds again,  with breaks about every 10km.  For a change we walked through corn fields.

And the heavens opened on us again,this time we week got caught out in the open. We put on our ponchos, covered our packs and kept walking.

Today was a perfect day for walking, cool and sunny, with a nice breeze blowing over the Meseta. We started from Burgos just after first light. The first few kilometers where along the river, through a park, past the university, and through the outer suburbs of Burgos. We stopped for our first coffee after about 10km. We walked over a number of hills, steadily increasing our altitude until we were on the Meseta. We tried to break the walking up into 10km blocks.

A high altitude plain, lots of wheat and sunflower fields. The wheat had been harvested some time ago, and the straw bales were lying in the fields awaiting stacking on hay stacks. There were a lot of windmills generating power on the surrounding hills.

We are staying at an Albergue tonight, and have just had the communal meal and sat with a couple of nice Dutch ladies. A little drama at dinner, an older man with some sort of medical problems collapsed during dinner and a few of us helped him up to his bed.

One if the services offered here is that the Albergue did my washing, I was getting a little smelly.

One of the problems is that we don’t have wifi, and mobile phone coverage on the Meseta is poor. It could be like this for the next 4-6 days.

In a lot of these small villages the church bells are rung on the hour with the corresponding number of chimes for the hour on the hour and then 2 chimes on the half hour.

We are over the 300km mark, less than 500km to go.

We started the day out worried a little about the weather, it looked like it was going to rain and it did. At one stage we donned our ponchos and kept walking, but it didn’t last long, just some showers on and off.

We walked through a couple of small villages, stopped for the obligatory coffee and rest, then we headed up the Atapuerca mountains. At the top was a plateau with a cross beside the trail.

The walk down was over some very rocky paths until we made it to a paved road. Then we walked on through more villages and the scenery stated to get a little more industrial and we walked around the back of the Burgos airport to Villafria, where had to seek shelter in a bar as the heavens opened. We had a couple of drinks while waiting for the rain to stop, in the end enquired about getting a taxi and everyone suggested the bus. As it turned out not a bad option, as the bus stop was out front of the bar and it only cost 1€ each for the ride into Burgos.

Our hotel is directly across the plaza from the Burgos Cathedral.

The cathedral is a stunning piece of gothic architecture.

We started the day bright and early, just before sun up and followed the trail out of Belorado through wheat fields,  and through a number of small towns and over rolling hills.At one of the villages there is a fountain, where if a pilgrim puts there head in they will have the strength to complete the journey to Santiago de Compestala, there are fish in the fountain as  I found out.

Until we got to VillaFranca Montes de Orca, where stopped for a break, had something to eat before tackling the climb out of town and up into the mountains.  We reached a peak of about 1000metres,  and the climate cooled and it was quite pleasant walking through the trees.

The scenery was very much like walking through the Macedon ranges.  There were a couple of challenging bits, that were quite steep.

We had to walk a little extra this day as the accommodation was another 4km past San Juan de Ortega, through more sunflower fields.

The start of the day was a bit of a concern, it was bucketing down with rain. This delayed our start to about 9am. The bonus was a bit if cloud cover all day and the temperature was a bit cooler.

We covered about 23km today and stopped about 4 times to have a break, and change socks. We try and have a coffee break after about 5km or so each morning.

Enjoying the first break of the day.

We walked through fields of  sunflowers, the photo shows the sunflowers and its the same as we feel at the end if each day.

We visited a number of old church’s that are open to all Pilgrims. One of which had some skeletal remains in a glass casket.

The day started out well, we were expecting a little rain and we got some later in the day. As well as a bit of thunder. The walk took us over a number of rolling hills, through small towns and many vineyards.

We stopped for lunch in a small park in a “new” town, it looks to have been completely built in the last 10 years. With modern sports facilities,a golf course, swimming pool etc.

We are over the 200km mark, passing a way point that stated 562km to go.

My feet are starting to fall apart I have 6 blisters and seem to have lost the end of one toe. Not really, the blister was so large it took off a callous from the end of the toe.

We arrived at our hotel just in time, as soon as we had settled in it began to hail. (See the photo). The temperature dropped slightly, then went back ip up to 26-28c. Most of the vineyards we have walked through have a lot of ripe grapes ready to be picked. I hope the hail didn’t do too much damage.

We went to mass in the cathedral de La Calzada, Santo Domingo de la Calzada they have 2 live chickens. If you want to know why follow this link http://www.english.catedralsantodomingo.es/santo_domingo.html, it’s a long story.

Today was a better day, we started the walk through parklands, and past a very good graffiti mural, on through more parklands with swans, and very large fish (carp) in the water. The path varied over rolling hills and through vineyards. We stopped for lunch in Navarette, and watched the Spanish equivalent of the the Tour de France, La Vuelta road race go through town. At the same time a wedding was under way, with the groom being “escorted” to the alter by a motorcycle gang (all) wearing weird fluffy animal helmets. The bride arrived later and couldn’t cross the road as the police had blocked the road for the cycle race to pass. After lunch we pressed on, the path meandered out of town through some unattractive semi industrial areas and into more vineyards.
Not much shade, and the weather changed and started to lightly rain. We used our built in pack covers for the first time. Then it cleared up and became hot and humid again.

The Hostel Hospira was our final destination, and is a nice surprise. The lady running it is very nice, speaks English, and was apologetic about our room. I don’t know why, we have a 3 bed room to ourselves, aircon, tv, free wifi. It might have something to do with the shower/bathroom which had a ceiling height of well under 2 metres, even Janice has to sit down to shower. But this is the Camino, everything is different to what we normally expect. A couple of things I have learnt so far, 1) the camino will provide, 2) expect your norms to be challenged.

Walking through vineyards

Starting to look a little worse for wear.

Fish (carp) and lots of them

Red wine grapes, almost ready for picking.

Oops, 44km in 10.5hrs. There were some very long stretches today, and surprise, surprise some more hills. Some not so small. We made it to Viana, and we couldn’t walk any further so we got a taxi for the last 9km to Logrono. So much for taking 2 days to do this in 2 legs. It wasn’t intentional, we just kept going to the next town until we couldn’t go any further. We stopped at a bar in the outskirts of Viana, booked a hotel in Logrono and had the bar owner call us a taxi. We have treated ourselves to a proper hotel, with beds, linen and aircon. However this has got us out of the area serving the Camino, so we have to deal things like Spanish dinner time is 9pm onwards. No meals are served in restaurants, bars, cafe before this time. Yes you can get Pinchos, and drinks but after a long walk one wants a proper meal, meat and 3 veg please.

The feet are not great today, I have several large blisters. Which have burst.
Trying to deal with them using Compeed patches.

On the road again.

One of many very pretty Spanish towns

The never ending road

Day 6, and wow what a day. We made over the 100km mark, we have done about 120km. So the 800km is looking more realistic. Today 31km and 10hrs. The mountains slow us down. 😦
We started the day before first light, had a little difficulty staying on the right path. Fortunately lots of other pilgrim’s were already on the road so we followed everyone else. It wasn’t so hot today, but the sun is pretty fierce. We walked past a winery (Bodega) that serves free wine to pilgrims out of a tap in the wall. We got there in time to get just a taste.

We have stopped in Azqueta at a Casa Rural. Basically someones home and they have turned the top floor (3rd) into 3 bedrooms and a common area. There appear to be about 5 or 6 other people staying here. The building is made of stones, and looks very old. A communal dinner is served at 7:30pm. We stopped here as we didn’t think we could get over the next mountain to the next town, and sleeping under the stars in a field is not that appealing.

We will probably get moving early, to get over the mountain before it gets too hot. The next city is Logorno, about 54km away. It will probably take us 2 days to get there.