Day 17–Saturday, May 27. Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz (12.5 miles)

We had a very cranky old woman in our room last night who kept giving Pam and I the evil eye whenever she had the chance. When she got up this morning, I was feeling a little mean, so I just kept pretending to be asleep until she got done packing up in the dark. The other Korean man in the room with us was already up so I got up and flipped on the light so he could see. When we headed down for breakfast, we got an even bigger evil eye.

Chris was already out the door when we got done with breakfast. We did manage beat Bob and Paul out the door, but they flew past us before we even got to the edge of town.

This is our second day on the Meseta. The weather has been working in our favor so far. We had a moderate rise in elevation but it was a cool morning. Pam was moving at her normal morning snail pace. It’s kind of amazing to be hiking at the same elevation of all the wind turbines you can see on the horizon from below the Meseta.

On our second mesa, we ran across a truck/camper that had a small fruit and drink stand. When we got there, the owner was just waking up as evidenced by his back to us with the sound of running water. We let him enjoy his privacy and moved on. We later found out from Shaun that he had driven this truck with his family all the way to Mongolia across Russia and was returning home. He made money by reselling fruit and drinks asking only for donations. People tend to be more generous when no price is posted on items.

The first town was Hontanas over 7 miles up the trail. This town is well hidden on the trail. You can’t even see it from 100 meters out. All of a sudden the trail dips and you are in town. We stopped here for a drink in a surprisingly packed cafe garden area. While we were there, Maria showed up with her missing Anton. Not too much longer, Shaun showed up. We thought we were behind him and were playing catch up, so we were surprised that we had actually gotten out before him for a change.

The next stop was an abandoned monastery called San Anton about another 4 miles down the trail. The road actually runs through the arches of the superstructure. An enterprising man had set up a cafe in part of the ruins and was playing some great older music (Louis Armstrong, etc). We stopped to cool off a bit because the sun had decided to come out in force. Maria and Anton joined us after a bit. They even danced a bit before hitting the road again.

It was pretty much a road walk the rest of the way into Castrojeriz. Not my favorite, but at least this portion had some trees to offer a little shade. Castrojeriz is a fairly long small town–almost 2K in length (1.25 miles). It may not sound like much, but when you end up walking the length of it 5 times in a day it definitely feels a lot longer.

We had neglected to make reservations for an Albergue that Samuel offered to make for us. Naturally, the Albergue in question is at the far end of town. Even more naturally, it was full when we got there. Barry was sitting at a bar across the street having a beer and offered up a suggestion for another spot back at the other end of town. When he said they had a foot bath, we headed back across the length of town again.

Ultreia had people standing outside of it when we arrived at it’s door–Rachael and her parents whom we met last evening over sangria. Fortunately, they didn’t get the last beds and there were still beds available for us. We went in, dropped packs, and settled in.

Shaun and I had been complaining how people come into Albergues and sleep all afternoon making everyone be quiet around them. I came back in the room to find Pam, Shaun, Mike, Pam, and Rachael all asleep. I couldn’t resist leaving Shaun a note.

I woke my Pam up and we went up to the foot bath. It was cold and relaxing on the feet. Shaun eventually joined us before we went in search of food. When we checked in, the owner told us there was a free wine tasting at 8:30. All we found to eat were frozen pizzas which we had difficulty getting the store owner to understand. We headed back to Ultreia for the wine tasting in time to see that the pilgrim dinner was an excellent one that we had skipped.

The wine tasting turned out to be much more than just a tasting. In fact, the wine was the least impressive part of the evening, and the wine was an excellent one. Under neath all the house in Castrojeriz is a tunnel dating back to the 10th century. The owner took us down into his “wine cellar” which was about 30′ below the main road. Some of the arches in the tunnel dated back to the 1st Century and were Roman Arches from old buildings retasked in the tunnel construction. During the Spanish Civil war, this tunnel was used extensively by the city inhabitants and saw a fair amount of fighting. Now its been partitioned off and is just a series of deep basements.

Pam and I decided to have one more for bath before bed to help reduce the swelling in our feet. It was heavenly. We need more places with foot baths or access to running streams during the day to cool off our feet.