Author: Thom

After about an hour and a half of early-morning hiking, we came to the village of Terradillos de los Templarios. This is an ancient village associated with the Knights Templar, the legend of El Cid, and is even mentioned in the Codex Calixtinus as a “prosperous and excellent village, abundant in bread, wine, meat and all kinds of products”. We […]

We had our first breakfast of April 18 early in the morning in the bar of the Albergue La Morena in Ledigos. For some reason, everybody was moving slower than usual this morning. It might have been the wine from the night before. Of course, what you see here are our packs and the breakfast aftermath. Date: 18 April 2016 […]

In Ledigos, we stayed at a relatively new place, the Albergue La Morena. It first opened in 2015, and it’s clean and comfortable. Here we see the Washington State Pilgrims: Francine with a group of students and friends from the Evergreen State College, of whom I have spoken before in these pages. Now you get to see them! Date: 17 […]

Just as we crested a hillside and spotted the village of Ledigos for the first time, dark storm clouds hove into view. I scoffed that they were nothing – a piffle. Francine, apparently afraid of jinxing the weather before we got into our albergue, shushed me. But it was too late, as the sky started pelting us with hail. We […]

After a while, we came to a place where the Camino crossed the highway and continued on the other side of the road. Needless to say, we continued to walk on the highway. Today had been enough of a cold, wet slog that we decided to knock off early, in the next town we came to. We arrived in Ledigos […]

No, not Hobbit homes. These are bodegas, underground storage most often used as wine cellars. Although we will come upon them frequently in the coming week, these are the first major ones we sighted. As you can see, we are walking along the highway at this point, which is never my favourite. Date: 17 April 2016 Place: Between Calzadilla de […]

We stopped for lunch in the same place at Calzadilla de la Cueza where I had stopped for lunch three years previous. This time it was cold enough that we lunched indoors rather than out. Fun fact: three years ago I forgot my fleece on one of the chairs here and didn’t realize it until we were already an hour […]

After four or five hours of cross-Meseta trek, we arrive at last in the tiny village of Calzadilla de la Cueza (population 52). Large sections of this village are abandoned, and the major business seems to be agriculture and catering to pilgrims. We immediately sought out a spot for a late lunch. Date: 17 April 2016 Place: Entering Calzadilla de […]

After we got through the worst of the flooded bits, we spent hours and hours walking through the Meseta, the endless flat. I took about a dozen photos that over the course of four hours that are all pretty much variations on this theme. Even so, there were other flooded portions. At various points we were obligated to jump wide […]