Day 25: Leon rest day

Do you know what's nice? Sleeping in. Sleeping in is sooooo nice.

You know what's awesome? Waking up and not having to go through the morning routine of putting on your walking clothes, fixing all your compeeds and other bandaids, repacking your bag, looking under everything to make sure you haven't left anything behind...

Glorious.

Even better? Discovering that the novel your favourite author wasn't releasing until the next moth had been released early, and it just so happens to coincide with your rest day! It's like she knew!

But this raised that other problem- do we sightsee or stay in bed and read?

Well, we did both.

We started with breakfast under the cathedral:

Followed by an exploration of the cathedral:

The stained glass windows in there are stunning.

Unfortunately, there was scaffolding blocking the rose window. Unimpressed!

Have you ever seen a statue of a pregnant Mary? Well, now you have:

The inner courtyard of the cathedral:

We wandered through the city a bit more... But then the lure of our new Penny Reid was calling to us. Look, I'm only human!

Day 24: Mansilla de la Mulas to León (20km)

We walked 8km along the freeway, which despite the nice weather, was a pretty crummy walk. You can't even have a proper conversation with the sound of the cars and trucks drowning your words out.

We eventually saw some peregrinos at a bus stop and convinced ourselves that we also wanted to catch the bus into León, as we knew from experience that walking into a big city is the worst. 

After waiting for about half an hour, we discovered that the bus doesn't normally go to this town on a Saturday. We were instructed to go to the next town where there would be a bus. So off we walked again.

We were waiting at the bus stop again before finally working out how to read the timetable. Turns out the bus doesn't run at all on a Saturday. Awesome. So we decided to take a taxi into the city. 

Made the right decision and rewarded ourselves with Chinese food.

After that, we played tourist for awhile. We planned to have the next day off to see everything properly, but it was fun to just wander. 

What we really wanted to do was buy some new clothes- I really wanted some new shoes because my sneakers didn't seem to love life too much, Noni wanted some shorts and possibly a pair of sandals to walk in. But no. We couldn't do that because it was siesta. And then because it was a Saturday, half the stores we wanted to go to (stores aimed at pilgrims) weren't open after siesta. And of course, the next day was Sunday so nothing was open then. Ugh. 

So here are some shots from playing tourist:

Cool Saint:

Gaudi building:

Soldier stabbing crocodile on Gaudi building:

Leon Cathedral:

Weird dancing Jesus in the archway above the entrance to the cathedral:

Us being tourists:

Day 23: El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de la Mulas (18.5km)

We had another lovely walking day with gorgeous, warm weather. 

There's really nothing to different to say about the Meseta part of the trip- it's a lot of walking in straight lines. 

Mansilla was a bit of a nothing town though, but the lady in the grocery store gave Noni and I free lollies- win!!!

Day 22: Sahagún to El Burgo Ranero (18.5km)

Another pleasant walk! Nothing much to comment on.

 

El Burgo Ranero is a very nothing town. The hostals were all too pricey so we had to stay in an albergue again. Cold showers. Nice. Luckily it was warm that day. 

 

We stumbled across a restaurant for lunch away from where all the other bars and restaurants were. It was just down from the church, and is called Cafeteria El Burgo. 

They had vegetarian options Noni could actually eat, and the food was delicious. We decided to go back there for dinner and then found out we needed to reserve a place. That seemed odd, but we did it anyway. Luckily we did, because it turned out we were reserving for some homemade paella! It was the best thing I've eaten this entire trip!

 

They set up the restaurant so we were all eating at a communal table like a family. 

The owners then explained that they had done the camino a few years ago and had an affinity with all pilgrims. They used to manage an albergue, which is where the couple had met, and they're now running a restaurant so all pilgrims could eat decent food for a decent price, and they were saving up to open their own albergue. 

We all swapped stories about we why we're doing the camino, we shared our favourite experiences, and we were all serenaded by the owner with some Spanish songs. It was such an amazing experience. I wish these two all the best for their future endeavors, and I'd love to stay at their albergue some day as I'm sure it would be just as wonderful an experience.

So a good, but pretty nothing day turned into another amazing Camino experience.

Day 21: Calzadilla to Sahagún (23km)

For the first time in awhile, the weather was beautiful... And we enjoyed the walk! What a difference good weather makes. Even though we were still in the flat meseta, we were able to see the positive side of everything and really enjoyed ourselves. I was getting worried there!

Here's Noni with her devil horns up because she chose to walk along the road IN SIN as opposed to the Camino path. Enjoy hell, Noni, enjoy hell.

We passed this lovely man in one of the many villages we walked through. I think I've seen more donkeys on this trip than I've seen in my entire life!

The thing that really struck us today was how much SKY there was - the flatness of the Meseta lets you see it. The nice weather makes you enjoy it.

Something we've noticed a lot of in Spain are these "hobbit houses", as we've taken to calling them.

It turns out they're actually wine cellars. Who has that much wine that they need a separate property to house their collection? Or more importantly, why don't I have so much wine that I need a separate property to house them?

Oh that's right- cos I drink it all.

On top of our awesome day, we got free strawberries from the shopkeeper at the grocery store! Free food ALWAYS tastes better.

Day 20: Carrión de Los Condes to Calzadilla (18km)

Today was just awful. 

Awful, windy, and freezing cold.

This was the worst day of the meseta. It's an 18km stretch of straight, old Roman road, with no towns or food or water in between. And of course, it was blisteringly cold. 

Noni and I just felt like crap. We were bored out of our minds and we suddenly developed blisters, despite being blister-free for 20 previous days of walking. 

About 8km from the end, we met Julie from Cronulla who walked the last bit with us. We definitely slowed her down because she was a little pocket rocket, but she kept us so entertained, made us enjoy ourselves, and generally made us able to survive the rest of the walk without going postal.

The hostal that night was alright- the owner was pretty touchy, as in, constantly with the touching of all the women in the place. It was my worst nightmare- strangers touching me, and I had to pretend that it was nice and friendly. Yuck. 

We were limited to the pilgrim menu again that night, something we try to avoid. I wish we could have avoided it once more, because the food was disgusting- flavourless soup, cold chips and rice.

Today was not a great day. Many people skip the Meseta and I completely understand why. Today was a massive challenge, but I'm glad we did it and made it to the end of that stretch with our sanity intact.

Day 19: Frómista to Carrión de Los Condes (19km)

After that lovely night's sleep we were super perky for another day of rainy walking weather.

Especially because we missed the breakfast we had paid for. Even though we were down there before the alleged finish time. Not happy. Hostelerios were nowhere to be found, so we went to the nearest bar and I got myself a coffee and the world's most indulgent muffin to console myself.

Then because we were officially on the Meseta now, we walked in a straight line for many kilometres. 

If you look closely past the person you can clearly see in this picture, further up the path are many different coloured dots. These are all pilgrims. It was the weirdest sight:

We accidentally took an alternative camino path which was a couple of kilometres longer. Damn it, arrows! You failed us! Sure, it was a nice walk next to a canal, but it was pouring with rain, so super muddy and slippery. I just wasn't in the mood. One bonus: we did run into an Irishman, Terry, who we met a week or so earlier. Look at all this running into old friends that's happening!

Speaking of old friends, Santiago himself!

Arrived at Carrión and found excellent, very cheap private accommodation. Only €2 more than the previous night's shitty accomodation. Winning!

Ugh, are we there yet?!

 

Day 18: Castrojeriz to Frómista (25km)

As we left town and hit the dreaded Meseta region of the Camino, which is supposed to be very flat and boring, the Camino throws one last obstacle at you: a huge hill.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't look too bad, and I guess the path looks like it winds up a nice, gentle way.

Tell that to my legs and lungs!

Here's the obligatory, "Oh, I'm not struggling to breathe and walk at the same time! I've just stopped here to take a photo!" photo:

After a million hours of climbing later (or maybe half an hour at most) we arrived at the top to some stunning views. You can make out the town we left that morning in the distance.

And of course, the moment we got up the top of the huge hill it started pouring.

But positive side: it didn't rain as we were climbing up, and it didn't rain on the scary steep descent on the other side of the hill.

The fields we walked through were so luscious and green. We passed so many different types of wildflowers. By far, my favourite thing about the Camino is walking through endless fields of wildflowers. 

At about the 14km mark we ran into Chris and John one last time. They were going to be staying at a cute little electricity-free church for the evening, with John staying to make sure Chris did the right thing by his legs.

Here's the cute St James statue in the church:

And I realise I haven't shared Chris's photo here before, so here he is posing for us with his walking poles, how we always remember him and his robot stride:

We had lunch with John and realised this would probably be the last time we'd see him; very bitter-sweet.

The rest of the walk was largely uneventful, and was mostly alongside a gorgeous canal.

And then we got to Fromista, our destination for the evening.

After a confusing search, we eventually found the municipal albergue. It was on the other side of this castle-looking church, and very badly signposted. 

If I can give you one piece of advice it is this: NEVER NEVER STAY HERE. It was the WORST. So cold, no atmosphere, and worst of all? THE HOSPITALERIOS SMOKED IN THEIR PRIVATE ROOMS UNDER THE DORMS. Everything smelled of smoke. It was filthy. 

We went out for dinner and it was absolutely revolting. I think the pasta had been boiling for about three hours, it was so mushy and tasteless.

So we decided on having a second dinner. Yes, that's totally a thing. And perfectly acceptable when you've walked a million kilometres. 

Well, it was just good luck that we had such a bad first dinner, because who should be leaving the second restaurant just as we entered it? Our friends from Roncesvalles! Philip, Anne and Elma. It was wonderful to run into them, especially after farewelling John and Chris and thinking we weren't going to see anymore of our original group. It was just wonderful.

Then, bedtime. Of course we had another hideous snorer in the room. It's alright for snorers: they sleep perfectly well. Everyone else has the worst night's sleep ever. Then people decided that 5am was a good time to get ready to go. Oh, we won't leave til 7, but we'll start getting ready at 5. And we're so nice that we won't turn on the light, but we're going to open the door to give us light... And leave it open when we go so the outside light and noise still comes in. So considerate.

I'll end up this rant with some pictures of wildflowers to cleanse the palette, shall I?