Walking the Camino de Santiago
20 April 2013 After breakfasting in the Benedictine hotel, we walked to the bus station – maybe 1.5 km – and caught the 9:30 bus to Hospital de Orbigo. We walked back across the town to Puente de Orbigo and walked across (and back across) the astonishing medieval bridge there. There´s a jousting field next to the bridge. Jousting is […]
» Read more19 April 2013 Arrived in Leon after a relatively easy 18 km walk, made only slightly tiring by the fact that much of it was on city sidewalks. This is a fantastic city, probably my favourite so far other than Pamplona. Narrow, crooked streets, bursting with life and song and commerce. The cathedral is glorious. There´s an audio tour, of […]
» Read moreMany apologies. The blog has been down, it appears, for three days while we were away from any web access. Your normal service is now restored, and we’ll do our best to catch you up in subsequent posts.
» Read moreIt seems like I´ve been walking the long, straight paths of the Meseta forever, though in truth it´s only been six days. Less than a week! But many of the photos taken are of the road I´m travelling, generally a straight line to the horizon. There´s a lot of time to think on the Meseta while you walk through the […]
» Read more15 April 2013 Today Eamon and I walked a record-breaking 34 km. The walk to Fromista along the Canal de Castilla was very pleasant; it was not yet hot (we left at 7:30), and a cool breeze blew through the trees beside the canal. Lunch was in Fromista, where I spent some time in the Romanesque masterpiece of the Iglesia […]
» Read moreThird Sunday of Easter 14 April 2013 Hot. Dry. Sunny. This is the Meseta, a large arid plateau that makes up the middle third of the Camino through Spain. The Meseta is said to be the second trial of the Camino. In the first third, you are tried physically. In the bleak Mesta, you are tried mentally. It has not […]
» Read more13 April 2013 Burgos Cathedral this morning. I really wish I could upload photos from this connection, as I probably took a hundred or more. We spent about two hours wandering through this – superlatives fail me – magnificent? glorious? fantastical? – Gothic marvel in stone. I was a little disturbed by the decision to turn much of the structure […]
» Read moreWhat you see is (almost) my entire pack contents for the Camino de Santiago. Clothes: Two pairs of hiking pants, three shirts (No sleeve, Shortsleeve, longsleeve), four pairs underwear, one travel bra, two sport bras, four pairs socks, one pair silk bottoms, two outer wear long sleeve shell tops with the thumbhole things, one jacket lightweight, one pair crocs. Sleeping items […]
» Read moreBoots still wet, and wind still howling, the long deathmarch through the industrial wastelands surrounding Burgos needs little in the way of narration. Suffice to say, it was not the most charming possible introduction to a city. The central portion of the old city is beautiful, but very trendy and expensive. The cathedral is beautiful – perhaps the most spectacular […]
» Read more11 April 2013 Felt much better after a good sleep and three boxes of orange juice. We left Belorado in good form and breakfasted in Tosantos. It was a sunny, if breezy still, walk through the countryside we´d come to expect – brilliant green farm fields in bowl-shaped valleys. We lunched in a picturesque truck stop in Villafranca Montes de […]
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