It turned out last night that one of our windows looked up directly at the storks which pleased Dorothy no end. Their comings and goings kept her entertained for hours. 😊.

Dinner was excellent. We were joined at the table by Paula, the Dutch GP who is now partially retired and Joachim, a German GP who has just sold his practice to a young chap and is quietly poodling along the Camino at a rate of roughly 15km a day. He had a major accident some 20 years ago which partially destroyed his right knee. It’s been repaired but limits him to relatively short distances. He aims to get to Santiago sometime in July. Whereas Paula gives the impression of someone who would be quite a fierce protector of her patient’s rights, Joachim comes across as a much more thoughtful, gentle soul. We saw Joachim for the last time reposing in a hammock in the Hildegard of Bingen albergue (more later) whereas Paula will have made it here tonight.

We grabbed breakfast at 7 o’clock because we were only planning on walking around 25km today, so we had plenty of time. At breakfast was a French chap recently retired from the oil industry in Africa – sounds very dodgy but I earned some brownie points by not quizzing him about that, and his son who was only 14 and didn’t look particularly enamoured to be walking 800km to Santiago. Also there was a German lady who like Joachim was happily poodling along and an Italian chap cycling to Santiago on a non battery operated mountain bike – lots of brownie points for that.

The first 5.4km was along the left bank of a canal that delivers much needed water for irrigating the wheat, barley and oats that stretch from here to heaven and back.

Shortly before we headed across the canal into Fromista are these very impressive locks.

We stopped in Fromista for coffee and to chill for a while – didn’t want to get to our hotel too soon. But we did see ..

We left Fromista, were offered an alternative path through fields and forests but Dorothy chose to take the default route alongside the road 😞 for 19km, but I did get to take some photos of poppies 😊.

Sometimes Spain shows it’s more Dali-esque side.

More poppies

I’ll break a tradition here

These were taken immediately after a delicious ‘lunch’ of fried eggs, ham and tomatoes from a small café on a dilapidated side street. It seems that many cafes only exist to service the peregrinos that pass through on their way to Santiago. God only knows how they survived during the pandemic.

We passed through here six years ago. It’s a crazy sort of place. Music today was Gregorian chant, six years ago it was Hildegard of Bingen. We found Joachim nesting in a hammock. Just leaving was the defeated Frenchman from yesterday who gamely doffed his virtual cap accompanied by a gentle ‘bien Camino’ as he left.

Apparently peregrinos sleep in the wooden structures in the centre of the picture and also in the construction pipe on the far right – odd but true.

Answer : killed by herbicides applied by employees of the Spanish ‘destroy all poppies, flying and crawling insects’ brigade.

We’re now holed up in a decent hostel adjacent to the plaza de mayor, unsurprisingly called hostal plaza de mayor. We’ve had dinner at what is supposed to be the best restaurant in town and since they actually had sautéed vegetables as a starter on the menu – enough for our needs, it deserves a photo.

We weren’t too surprised to find when it arrived that the sautéed vegetables included tiny pieces of bacon 😉.

Buen camino