Author: Thom

The next village after Hospital de Órbigo is Villares de Órbigo, the name of which literally means something like “little town near the Órbigo”. While there are pieces of public art all along the Camino, this one is something else. It’s not religious, it’s not pilgrim-related, and it seems quite out of place in this tiny courtyard buried in the […]

The flag of the Knights of Malta hangs over an albergue in Hospital de Órbigo. Do they actually operate this hostal, as they did here seven hundred years ago? Or is it just hung in homage to the town’s history? Some day I will drop in and find out. Date: 20 April 2013Place: Hospital de Órbigo (Province of León, Castilla […]

This is the high altar reredos of the Iglesia de San Juan Bautista in Hospital de Órbigo. The photo is a little grainy, but you can clearly see the exuberance of the almost architectural structure. For me, there’s something that just feels right about Spanish church design. The interiors tend to be mostly undecorated, except for the sanctuary and the […]

After the bus dropped us off in Hospital de Órbigo, we had to walk a bit to find the Camino. Eventually, we arrived at this magnificent bridge, upon which the Camino crosses the Rio Órbigo and its wide floodplain. To the right, you see a jousting field, where jousts are still held annually to celebrate a most peculiar incident in […]

In the morning, Francine and I headed for the bus station. We had decided that Francine’s first day walking the Camino shouldn’t be the typical stage from León to Villadangos del Páramo, since much of that was sidewalks and suburbia. Instead, we took a bus to Hospital de Órbigo, which would have been our lunch the following day. So, essentially, […]

I met Eamon from New Zealand on my first day walking the Camino. When this photo was taken, we were having what I presumed to be our last meal together. How wrong I was – we would meet again in a week or so. Looking at this photo now, almost a decade after it was taken, I’m reminded how close […]

Here we see a group of pilgrims walking through a plaza in León. I had walked with some of these folks since my first day on Camino, 19 days and almost 450km ago. I would never see most of them again. Since I didn’t want Francine’s first walking day to be the suburbs of León, we planned to take a […]

Francine arrived in León! We met at the cathedral square and ran into each others’ arms. After some adventures involving an interrupted tour of the cathedral and injured French pilgrims, we finally made it back to our lodgings, where she flashed that smirky smile I love so much. Date: 19 April 2013Place: León (Province of León, Castilla y León, Spain)Today […]