We’ve stopped in Castrojeriz, a small town of some 600 inhabitants with a main street some 2km long. Our albergue was right at the far end of the town (sigh).

We started relatively bright and early; we left at a around 6:30, got our first coffee of the day a couple of km later and then made comfortable progress for the rest of the morning. We joined up with an American couple, very pleasant people with all sorts of interesting problems, one a high school teacher, his wife a nurse practitioner, both around our age. She struggled towards the end of the day but led the way as we booked a room for the night.

It’s been pretty hot all day, comfortably above 30° for most of the time but it’s been extremely pleasant walking on the meseta. There’s no shade but it’s not flat and the countryside is interesting. We’ve had interesting stops in interesting locations with interesting people, a Dutch couple who like most Dutch people hare tail it out of Holland at the first sight of the sun and then spend most of the summer travelling around Europe, an Irish lad and a Spanish bar man in a deserted hermitage blasting out Irish folk music. Dos cold aqua con gas and dos bocadillos for only €6.

We or rather I, spent last night long and loud in conversation with a Dutch IT manager, 55, who had taken time out to walk from Rome to Santiago de Compostela. He’s covered 2100km so far. An intelligent chap, very well clued up on politics in the UK, Europe and the US, I broke pretty much all my vows of silence as we covered politics, religion, reasons for walking the Camino; pretty much every topic implicitly banned on the Camino. But we both enjoyed ourselves. 😉

His wife and three children are apparently looking forward to his return though I have my doubts after taking four months off, at the urging of his mother in law no less. He enjoyed his four large glasses of wine as I quietly sipped my single – can’t risk an attack of gout, allopurinol notwithstanding.

Perhaps we’ll see him en route again. People meet up, chat, move on and maybe meet up again a few stages later. For the more socially reserved of us this works well. Comments about insane creationists don’t matter too much when made to a nice chap that you’re unlikely to ever see again even if he does happen to believe that the earth is currently less than 6,000 years old.

Our clothes are being washed as I write; we’ll go hunting for dinner shortly. Food here isn’t good, salads are of the Welsh variety and last night’s potato salad came out of a first world war tin. But the wine last night was actually very good. Most wine served at pilgrim’s meals are at the raw end of the spectrum but last night’s was an exception. I’m looking forward to seeing what tonight’s will bring. More anaemic asparagus perhaps.

We covered 30km today, quite easily. I reckon that including stops we average around 4km per hour, not too bad going. Tomorrow, ideally we’ll reach Carrión de los Condes, a little over 44km from here but there are plenty of alternative stopping points if it gets too hot or we get too tired. We’ll continue to enjoy the walking and we’ll see how we go.

Buen Camino