“Carry on my wayward son. There’ll be peace when you are gone.” For some reason that song pops into my head every time I say this town’s name. This has been one of the more pleasant places we’ve stayed–great food and fantastic albergue. We stayed in a convent–“get thee to a nunnery”. I haven’t been in a convent since high school; the torture chambers at my high school were in the basement there.
The I’m feeling much better today. Still not a solid player at all aspects of my game (if you can follow my Imodium pun) but feeling good. We’ve decided that we’ve got to eat clean after all. Pam made me get a tortilla for breakfast (ham and egg casserole). If I didn’t look at it, I could control my gag reflex. I’ve become a chicken abortion consumer.
Carrion “my wayward son” was a charming little town with lots of options for eating and shopping. It has a quaint old down town (narrow streets with continuous facade on both sides) and not laid out on a grid. Walking out of town, we passed several old churches and monasteries. Carrion played an important role in the past as a pilgrim center in the Middle Ages as well as receiving the wrath of “El Cid” after the leading family mistreated his daughters. One of the monasteries on the edge of town has been converted to a high end hotel (much more than the 5 Euros we paid to stay at Espiritu Santo last night).
Now seems like a good time to comment on why we are staying in Albergue instead of camping like we had planned. To put it in its simplest form, it’s just too damn cheap and convenient to stay in an Albergue. The most we have paid so far was 15 Euros and that included breakfast and a nearly private room. If we were camping, we would gladly pay 5 Euros to shower (and the people around us would be willing to pay even more for us to shower) so it just makes sense. We get a shower, pretty comfortable bed, and cheap meals. So far, no bed bugs or lice (and only one case of dysentery–but I’m blaming that on Pam’s hands since she made the sandwich that took me down).
There weren’t as many towns today. At one point, we had a 10 mile stretch without even going through a village. One of the interesting points of this stretch was that it was running along a road built by the Romans over 2000 years ago. I can imagine Bobulas the Road Builder saying to his crew “I want to build a road that will last longer than the Roman Empire” at which point he was executed because Trumpus the Great considered it blasphemous to talk about the end of the empire while he was in charge.
About half way through the stretch we came upon an enterprising couple that converted a shipping container into a restaurant on the side of the trail. They had a grill going and I just couldn’t resist a couple of nice greasy grilled chorizos to help settle down my still rumbling stomach. I decided to wash it down with a Limon soda. For the last several days Pam has been threatening to trim my beard when I’m asleep. I took a sip from the can and my mustache got caught in the tab. She might have a point.
The light at the end of the tunnel was the little town of Caldadilla de la Cueza–a sleepy little village with a hospital and an albergue (a hospital is just a higher priced albergue), but they had great food. Pam chose salads and Aquarius’ for us to eat. The salad had eggs, tuna, and olives, so in theory, it was healthy. Once again, I was able to eat it if I didn’t look at it or think about the little sea creatures that swim and eat their own poop or contemplate the loss of chicken life before it even had a chance to discover if it was the next Einstein. Eating clean is tougher here that in India where they are vegetarians and like lintels and gestapo beans.
It was only 1:30 when we got done with lunch having already hiked 12 miles. The final 5 into Terradillos de Templarios would be a breeze. Our mistake was stopping for ice cream and cokes (clean by a matter of degrees). We ran into Brenda from Oregon who tried to talk us into calling it a day at 15 miles. She ordered a sangria and talked with us for a while. We were hemming and hawing about whether to stay or go. Brenda said just come up and see the room. She finished her drink and got up to take us to see the place. She couldn’t find her way back to the room. Pam was already sold on just the strength of the sangria. And that’s how we ended up in Ledigos.
