Belorado to San Juan de Ortega – 24.1km, 5.75 hours, El Descano

First off – Happy 3rd Birthday George! I hope you had a great day but please fall asleep as Daddy reads this to you. Well, maybe soon after he finishes reading it. I’m not trying to give you a boring bedtime story. Nana and I love you and will talk to you soon.

Today’s walk was wonderful in my humble opinion. That said, we have heard several people say they they didn’t enjoy at all. Go figure. There was a good amount of climbs with a total ascent of 573m with a few really steep sections before and after Villafranca Montes de Oca but much of the climbing was done in the shade of forest trees. That made a huge difference. Again, with mountains, we always have fantastic views, including back at the sunrise. We feared that the climbs would slow us so we started walking a little earlier than normal, at 6:40am. With sunrise at 7:45am, that meant walking with a headlamp. Note, we don’t have a headlamp, the streetlights were normally present and bright enough but the young man walking our speed just behind us sure had a bright headlamp. I of course used it to make scary shadows around pilgrims that just passed us or shadow puppets of rabbits and dogs. Find fun wherever you can.

To be fair to those that didn’t like the walk, in the forest trails, there were a lot of gnats or something similar always going for our eyes. They were annoying to me but not near as much to some others.

Our breakfast this morning was slightly disappointing. It was in the town of Tosantos which I had misread as Tostados. Tostados is Melanie’s favorite breakfast on the Camino, toasted baguette with butter and jam. It turned out that in Tosantos, they don’t even serve tostados. We settled for croissants. Silly me.

We were in the town of Villafranca Montes de Oca before we even broke much of a sweat and that was almost the half way point for the day. We stayed at the albergue in this village out last Camino Frances so we just had to stop at the same bar we stopped at last time for a very early lunch of a shared ham and egg sandwich on baguette. Absolutely delicious. We also celebrated the fact that this village was the birthplace of Juan Mata, one of my favorite ManU players.

The climb out of Villafranca, as I said, was steep but mostly shaded. It lacked all the excitement of the Middle Ages though. Back then, the hills were infamous for the number of bandits that laid in wait in the scrubland around the trail and they would rob the pilgrims. We only met two people asking for donations after giving out free watermelon, bananas, water, etc. We were cool with that though because at the top of the climb, cold watermelon tastes better than caviar, foie gras or steamed crabs.

We had booked two beds in San Juan de Oca for tonight and have enjoyed the “experience” so far. I say that because when we arrived, the hospelero took us aside and whispered to Melanie “we have 7 beds in two rooms. Both rooms have a toilet and shower. I’ll give you the room with three beds at 15€ per bed and you can have a private room if you buy all three beds. That made us uncomfortable but we said we would take it anyway. We were going to tell him to let us know if someone showed up needing a bed but before we could, he barged back into the room on the phone. He asked if we were married. The person on the phone needed beds for three people. He then showed us the secret matrimonial room with just a queen-sized bed and private room. “Could we stay here instead?” Sure! This wheeler-dealer is a riot. He later drove two pilgrims to Burgos for the discounted rate of 28€ because taxi drivers are too expensive at 50€ or 60€.

The bad news we got was in two parts. First, a friend from the hash community in Singapore passed away. King Lear was in bad health and we were told just a day or two earlier that he was in a terminal care hospice. He was more than 80 years old and in poor health for a while so it wasn’t a shock but the world is slightly less joyful today than it was yesterday.

The other bad news is even more personal but less serious. My shin was hurting a little bit over the last few days but, then again, so was every muscle in my body. I’m walking 20 – 28km a day with a 13kg backpack so the aches and pains are nothing new. The shin tenderness was new though. After showering once we arrived in San Juan, I bent over to dry my leg. I was shocked to see that the area above the boot line but below my calf on my left leg was very red, swollen, tender and warm. I’m no doctor but Dr. Google suggests I have a shin splint. The remedy is ice, elevation, stopping whatever I was doing to cause it and 7-9 weeks of rest. I think that’s an issue. Continued walking could lead to a stress fracture of my leg. I’m shipping my bag to Burgos tomorrow, and then walking there anyway, but we’ll decide then what to do next. This is new for me. And it sucks. (Don’t read that last bit to George, please)

That’s enough for today. Peace y’all. Goodnight George and Leo. We love you and miss you all.