The Good Follows The Bad Carrion de Los Condes

We have discovered that the Camino can be experienced in several ways. You can enlist a guide who will map out every stop, make reservations at hotels along the way and have your meals paid for and your backpack or suitcase forwarded to each town. You can bus forward through places you might deem undesirable, like the meseta, a long flat plain that takes about 7days to get through. Or the outskirts of Leon because the guidebook says it is industrial and not pretty.  I realize you may be forced to do things like have your pack forwarded or bus forward for health reasons or time constraints like some of the pilgrims we started out with have had to do. There is a saying here. Everyone has their own Camino.

John and I have chosen and committed to experiencing all of the Camino on our own terms and not on the perspectives of various guide books that will go unnamed.  That said, the meseta has been a peaceful and pleasant surprise filled with oasis towns here and there and we are just glad we have embarked upon it. Yes, it can get flat and hot. Those stories will be told.

Left Fromista early on our own and had a nice walk about 4k to our first coffee stop where they actually had donuts! What a treat! The service varies from surly to downright amazing. The bathrooms may be immaculate and possibly have hand soap and usually never any hand towels.

We walked from here where we would enter the province of Palencia, along a beautiful wooded riverside. Who said the meseta was boring? We stopped at the ancient pilgrim village of Villalcazar  de Sirga for a cervesa and a delicious plate of pickled veggies. Some of the cafe/bars have interesting little treats.  We decided to have a look at the village church here which is an impressive fortress church built by the knights Templar of which John and I are very interested.  Too bad the man taking the euro to see the thing was in such a bad mood. We thanked him and he got a via con dios from John on the way out.

Walked into Carrion de Los Condes with David, an experienced and spiritual man who is walking the Camino with his wife Barbara. It made the last 6k go fast.  Checked into the Hostal Santiago and headed out where we met up with John and Debbie, and Mike from the UK for a beer and Jack Daniels for the boys on a bet they had made over the Americas Cup, that the kiwis lost.

We walked to the store that is closed for siesta until 5 but wanted to make the nun show at the monastery at 6pm. We are starting to know the routines sort of. Ran into lots of other Camino friends and had another drink, barely made the grocery to stock up on supplies for tomorrow, and were late for the nun show which turned out to be a sing along.  All this and John was starting to feel under the weather.

Lesson number two...we must give our bodies priority over the social aspect which is immense.

The sing along was pretty special with the nuns asking for songs to be sung from each country represented there.  When they asked for one from the US, no one responded.  A few more were sung  along with a poem by our young friend, Kyle, when she looked around again.  Something, I don't know what, compelled me to blurt out that I would sing one. I just couldn't let this moment pass me by.  I asked for help from my American compatriots and said this song was written in my home state of Colorado, which it was.  I started singing America the Beautiful and as I did so, I reminded myself so much of my mother who I know would so do a thing like this. And yes, I know every word.  We closed the sing along with Amazing Grace and there was not a dry eye in the house.

Afterwards as we left the albergue with our friends we were led to a small restaurant by a local woman. It was to open at 7 but was locked up tighter than a drum.  We waited and waited and were tempted to leave and find another place.  There was a man and woman who walked up with a bag of groceries and we all entered.  The man took orders from a menu none of us could decipher and he could not translate, so there was a lot of guessing and pointing. It turned out to be the best pilgrims meal of the Camino so far with two jugs of wine with our friends,  Kyle and kiwis John and Debbie.
Back to the hostal Santiago later than I would have liked. I will pay for that tomorrow.

Our 25k day to Fromista...I learned a lot.

Left Grandmother Camino at 6:30 am after realizing we had told her we wanted to get up at 6am and then kicking ourselves as we were trying to get going to meet our own self created wake up call.  She had prepared for us toast, bread (it's different than toast, believe me), and the donuts she offered with her homemade jelly, us the day before.  We shoved this down with cafe con leche and smiles as she asked in her kind Spanish if we would like her on Facebook and asked if she could take our pictures. Took off into the night and started climbing a steep incline, turning around to see a steady stream of headlamps in the morning darkness.  Went on like this for a long time and finally reached the top.  As we descended, another pilgrim of whom we did not make his acquaintance said he felt as if he was on a roller coaster and put his arms up and flew down the hill laughing all the way with his sticks up in the air. We laughed and laughed as he went on his way, reminding us of what this is really all about.

We stopped at a hermitage where if you stay there they do a ritual of washing pilgrims feet, another amazing experience if you are lucky enough to stay here. The proprietress gave us a stamp in our credential and as we were leaving John and Debbie walked up. We started on with them and kept up with them the rest of the walk stopping once in a strange little desolate town for coffee and on into another place where we stopped for lunch. Their pace is a lot faster and I found myself kicking my own butt trying to keep up.  The lunch stop was much needed where we could take off our boots and massage our feet and play with the little kittens that were no way more than a few days old and obsessed with Johns backpack. They were so cute.

John and Debbie left us in the dust into Fromista where we stopped for a beer to figure out where we wanted to stay.  We decided on a private albergue with about 12 bunks in a single room.  We had gone to a hostal that had a lovely private room for 45 euro. For some reason we ended up in the albergue where we reunited with our friends Rick and Christine from Boston!  This Camino is one of departures and reunions that are so amazing!  We bunked next to Greg and Melody, an exhausted pair of Australians, who had walked over 50k that day.

Went and had a lovely pilgrims meal (very fancy) at 11euro. I was so happy to reconnect with our Camino comedian.  I was very tired this night, from the walking and the laughing, and finally realized that you really can't follow in anyone else's footsteps. You must walk at your own pace, in life and otherwise....

Meandering to Castrojeriz

This morning we arose early and started walking at about 6:20am into the clear cool Spanish darkness as the stars and moon shown brightly.  John had his headlamp on and we realized we were not alone when another couple moved in behind us.  It was an older German couple who spoke no English but who walked on with us in the silence of the morning for at least 2 hours.  When I stopped to look at the sky to see the Milky Way so clearly and the moon and the ley lines that the Camino sits on, they stopped and looked too. When I slowed down to possibly let them go ahead, they slowed down too.  At first I thought it a little strange and started to get annoyed thinking this would be such a nice  time to walk alone and quietly with just John.  But it was apparent that it wasn't happening so I just surrendered to it.  Ok I don't know what this is for but I know it is supposed to be happening or it wouldn't be, right? John's pace is usually faster so he is almost always ahead a ways.  So they were walking with me.  For hours. Saying nothing.  There seemed to be an energetic connection that made conversation unnecessary.  We eventually veered off about 100 meters for a coffee and lost the Germans who evidently had a more important agenda of making some miles in the rising sun. John surmised that they may have been appreciating the light from our headlamps since they didn't seem to have any.

The little rustic albergue where we stopped in the dark morning could handle only 12 pilgrims and was set on lovely grounds. We were there just in time for coffee with the six or so other pilgrims staying there and we met Andrew, another German who showed us his self customized desert shirt with holes cut out of his arm pits but white and long sleeved to ward off the sun. Amazing the people you meet out here.

5k later we came into Hontanas, a beautiful little oasis town on the meseta which we had to descend down into.  We stopped and were let into the little grocery store where we bought some snacks and a couple of cervesas. Yes it was only 9am but we had been walking for a few hours already and I swear you just crave replacing the carbs! Ok whatever....

6k later we get to the ancient crumbling ruins of a monestary which houses a religious refugio that sleeps 12 and I just had to check it out.  Wow is all I can say.  It has no electricity, hence cold showers but they serve you a dinner by candlelight in this magnificent place!  Wish we would have not wanted to push forward or we would have stayed just for the experience.  Next time....

As we were leaving, we saw our kiwi friends John and Debbie sitting by the side of the road having a snack.  They said to us that in the niche in the old stone wall nearby, there was a note with the names "John and Cayce" and Colorado on it.  "What are the chances that there is someone with your names from Colorado here too?"  Yea right.  Had he not alerted us to this fact we would not have seen the note in the niche where the monks in the old days used to leave bread for the passing pilgrims.  The note was from our other kiwi friends, Anna and Vicki, who we had met and walked with weeks before that said they missed us! They included their email addresses.  They were about two days ahead.  Camino magic.

We ambled into the town of Castrojeriz and after our lunch in the courtyard of the town cathedral, we stopped at a small doorway where the sign said "Hospital for the Soul". Naturally we were curious but had it not been for an English guy in the doorway who said to us "you have got to check this place out", we never would have entered. It was like an art gallery of sorts with beautiful music playing, candles lit and great cooking smells.  The photography on the walls had such beautiful sayings all relating to walking that it immediately brought tears to my eyes.  When I saw the man dressed in midevial clothing and a long pony tail down his back, stirring a pot of something in the kitchen, I had to thank him for this place.  He looked at me and said, "it is a gift to you, please go anywhere you like and help yourself to water and snacks."  He had places for reading and just sitting and contemplating, gardens in the back and caves he was digging in the stone at the edge of his property.  We told others about it.

We found a small pension at the edge of town where we had a private room and what turned out to be a private bathroom since no one else had checked in.  The proprietress was a grandmotherly woman who checked us in and gave us our stamps and some homemade doughnuts.

Had a delicious pilgrims meal with our old friends Anika and Mike. At the end we were invited by the bartender for a small glass of a Spanish liqueur and a special shot of the Spanish equivalent of Baileys for me...along with a kiss on both cheeks.  He sent us home with a big bag of a fruit that tastes like plums but is smaller and green.  John gets to carry that tomorrow. Such is the amazing hospitality along the way.