Day 21 Sunday May 22nd
Virgen del Camino to Santibanez de Valdeiglesias
20 miles (For Jimmy)
We had a quiet restful afternoon in Virgen del Camino. We did all our washing and strolled around the town, to check out the eating houses.
This was on the gate of the seminary next door to last night’s albergue.
Nearly all the people we have been constantly meeting have simply disappeared. We said farewell to Dana a couple of days ago. He had no more time and was taking the train from Leòn to Santiago yesterday.
The only regular peregrino we see now is Linsey from Winnipeg in Canada. Both English Chris’ have long disappeared off the radar, as have the Dutch group that we once seemed to march stride for stride.
We decided to eat in a burger joint, not feeling able to face yet another Peregrino menu. The burger was OK, but it seemed to contain more pork than beef.
We looked at our progress last night, and checked flights and prices home. We already have flights booked, for June 7th, but we will arrive days before that, which means having to support ourselves, unnecessarily in Santiago.
The best deal for both of us is Wednesday June 1st. So we’ve booked new flights. This means, however we need to cover 20 miles a day for the next 10 days.
Today, we did 20 exactly. We were out and on the road at 6:25. We could have gone earlier, but it was raining, and we waited 15 minutes to see if it would clear. It didn’t, so we headed out in our wet gear. We were out only a few minutes before it stopped.
We walked for just over 2 hours before we had breakfast of tostado (toast) and coffee at Villafangos del Paramo.
After that 30 minute stop we walked another 2 hours 20, and stopped at Hospital de Órbigo for a snack and another half hour break. The rain had held off and the sun came out, but there was a quite cold wind blowing, straight into our faces.
From there we walked the last 3 miles to Santibanez de Valdeiglesias. We were walking quite gingerly now, because we both had painful blisters on our heels. It was particularly painful to walk the cobbles across the bridge at Hospital de Órbigo!
We met this little girl in Hospital de Órbigo, yesterday.
As we approached the village, the church bells rang out and a very loud gun fired a succession of blasts for abut 15 minutes. The bells were still ringing when we arrived at the albergue, right beside the church.
There seems to be a fiesta on in the village. The sound system desk spread across the narrow street hid the door of the albergue from view, it took us two attempts to find it.
The albergue was open, but seemingly unstaffed. A sign said: make yourself at home, and someone will be along soon. So, we claimed 2 beds and had a shower. The whole place is very basic, the showers are like outside toilets, in the garden, though there’s lashings of hot water. The locks on the doors are totally ineffective, though.
This is where you wash yourself, in our albergue last night. It’s in a corner of the garden.
The albergue keeper finally showed up, took our passports, National and Camino, and a fiver from us. We’re officially guests, now.
We went to the bar across the road to see if we could we get some grub. There was nothing hot available so we opted for a couple of ham and cheese bocadillos. The ham resembled beef jerky and was probably tougher to chew.
I have to mention Jes, from somewhere in the USA, who was seated at the table next to us. He rattled on for over an hour and a half with interminable stories about his ‘sufferings’ in albergues, his sore leg, about when his 18 year old daughter told him she was travelling in Europe for two months, WITH TWO BOYS!! 2 people had been killed in Europe that year, to add to the worry. But it was OK, because it turns out the boys were HOCKEY PLAYERS!! Nobody was going to mess with them.
We weren’t Jes’ intended audience, they were seated at the table with him. It was just that Jes was LOUD!!
He also regaled us with his tale of how he helped a woman, for LITERALLY 20 minutes, down a very steep slab on the way into Zubiri that went totally unnoticed to Ricky and I. He did tell us he’s a mountaineer, and that’s AWESOME!
With his injured leg, he can’t do more than ten miles a day, but he’s going to finish the Camino, even if he does take another 20 days.
Jes is in his mid sixties, I’d guess, and he had a captive audience of a young girl and her father from his homeland. He and his wife started out on April 12th, 40 days ago. Even Moses made it out if the desert in that time.
Jes told his listeners (voluntary and involuntary) that he’d hate to be mentioned on anyone’s blog. He’s going to hate this, if he finds out. Hard luck Jes!!
Lack of wifi or even carrier signal prevented me publishing last night, so apologies for the tardiness.
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