Don’t you just love the names of the smaller towns and villages in Spain?  “Mansilla of the mules”.  Was Mansilla the mules owner or was he just a stubborn guy?  Could Mansilla be the chief mule?  Who knows?  By the way, see if you can recognize a trend in the photos from today. Better still, try hard to spot any differences. That is what 90% of what today’s walk looked like.

We started today with the knowledge that we had a room booked in the mule barn but our main goal was only 7.5km from Bercianos.  We started early at 6:45am to ensure our success. We just had to get to the town of El Burgo Ranero to visit La Costa del Adobe, with the best breakfast food on the entire Camino.  The apple tart cake is out of this world. The French Toast is more like a delicious cinnamon roll.  The yogurt with fresh fruit is excellent, great coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice are perfect and the service is efficient and pure New York deli style.  It’s good comedy too.

After that stop, we used Marcélo’s old trick.  He is a Brazilian dentist we met on the Camino Portuguese 12 years ago.  After this stop he would have said “Well that was an excellent breakfast but we have to start walking at some point even though today is only a 19km day.”  He just ignores the earlier walking and pretends he is starting the day. It helped us today, for sure.

It has started to drizzle on the way into El Burgo Ranero and on the way out as well but only enough to make pilgrims put on pack covers, not raincoats.  Everyone learned yesterday that raincoats keep you warm, not dry. While walking the Camino in the rain, you will get wet from the rain or the excess sweating inside a raincoat.  The overall weather for the walk today was chilly before sunrise, cloudy and cool until 11:11am when I saw the first shadow, then bloody hot the rest of the day though the planted shade trees along the trail helped a lot.

Much of the next 12.7km to Reliegos Melanie walked with Reba, a Lithuanian  woman. I just tried to keep up with them.  They were walking about two minutes faster for each kilometer.  Melanie said that she didn’t even notice. That is because walking with someone and having a good conversation makes the mileage go quickly.  I, on the other hand, noticed and now I am very tired. 

Once in Reliegos, we made a beeline for the second bar. The first bar is always too crowded and has a long queue for the toilets. As Reba was stopping there, she just had a drink.  Taiwanese Fiona & Filly were also there as well as a lot more pilgrims we see often but haven’t met yet.  Melanie and I had a cheese and tomato salad that tasted so good that I told the barmaid that I wanted to marry the cook. She replied “Él ya está casado” (He’s already married). After the food and two Aquarius, a medium-sized beer with lemon soda, and a café con leche, we said “Well that was an excellent breakfast but we have to start walking at some point even though today is only a 6km day”.  It really helps.

In Mansilla, we met up again, by chance, with Fiona and Filly at the laundromat. I thought that our timing was perfect as we got there just as a pilgrim was unloading one of the washing machines.   Just before our cycle finished two other people moved their laundry to two of the three driers. I still had dibs on that other one though. When our laundry had one minute left of the spin cycle, two pilgrims walked in and went straight to that last dryer.  They had washed their clothes at the albergue but had lunch before hanging their clothes up in the sun.  Buggers. It’s not a cardinal sin but they could have bought me an ice cream or something, right?

Okay, it’s bedtime. So far, so good.  Peace y’all. 

Goodnight George, Leo and Stella. Nana and I will see you soon.