Despite the longer mileage today, there is little to say about our walk. I doubt that you would be interested to learn that the first 17 kilometers out of Carrion is the longest section of the Camino Francés without a toilet. That was important information for Melanie but who else would care?

It rained this morning which reminded me (much too late) that it’s always good before a Camino to practice putting on rain gear at least once. We each carry a backpack cover and a raincoat that goes over us and our gear but those are in our own bags.  For speed, we keep our backpack on and retrieve the rain gear for each other.  We know exactly where our rain gear is but we don’t know where our walking partner’s gear is.  We even have trouble just getting into each other’s back pack.  We were grateful the rain was a light drizzle rather than a cloudburst. We would have had to swim to Santiago otherwise.

There is a Camino song composed by a Dutch man, Danny van Meeren, who opens his house to pilgrims for a rest in Viloria de Rioja.  My favorite phrase from the song is “Laughter in three languages”.  That may mean many things but mainly, it points out that when the pilgrims are talking to each other on the trail, or more often after the walk or over dinner, we have great fun with people from all over the world.  Sometimes though, humor doesn’t translate well at all.  I often bomb in just one language. Today, I did that twice. 

First, I should mention that today’s walk was dead flat and perfectly straight for many kilometers. Over the entire 26km, there was a total (not net) elevation gain of 108m.  After a particularly long stretch of flat path, there were two inclines of ten meters about 50 meters apart.  I would say these bumps in the road were steep but at ten meters up, who will notice?  As I got to the 10m “summit” of the first bump, two English guys were passing me. I said sarcastically “And they said there were no mountains in the Meseta”. One of the guys looked confused and replied “There isn’t” to which I theatrically pointed backwards and asked “Then what do you call that? I thought we were already in Galicia” (a mountainous province a week in front of us). He replied straight-faced “not yet”.  He never got the joke.  When he reached the second ten meter bump, he looked back at me.  I did my best arm-flailing gesture to say “See, I told you so.”  Then he just walked away. 

My second bomb of the day was at about halfway through that 17km toilet less stretch.  We were walking next to a field that has been recently harvested.  Overlooking the field, there was an elevated observation deck just 20 from our trail. Why?  Who knows? The field, like many others in the Meseta, looks to be about a million acres. It’s also as flat as a piece of paper. A European guy was sitting near the observation deck. I called out to him and said, “if you climb up that observation deck, you can see the Meseta”.  He didn’t even chuckle. I have to write better gags.

The only other thing of note today was we had to to say goodbye to more friends, Tor and Marianna from Denmark via Panama.  We met them on our first day leaving Pamplona.  We didn’t see them again until Castrojeriz where we had dinner together.  We met up a couple of more times by chance too but never on the trail again.  .  Marianna had a small medical problem after a few days walking and couldn’t go on by foot.  Pilgrims as they are though, they didn’t stop their Camino, they adapted. Since they had already booked rooms every 20-25km to Leon, they rented bikes and cycled the stages. They had previously cycled from Gibraltar to Denmark so they had nothing to prove.  They just enjoyed themselves and the company of others. That’s the Camino way. 

Goodnight and peace y’all. 

George, Leo and Stella, thanks for the phone call