Our austere albergue had an equally austere breakfast of toast and granola cereal. What brought life to the place was meeting a grandpa and grandson from France who were doing the camino together a section at a time each year and also Joanina, a beautiful young lady from Germany who had previously done the Northern France route that runs along the coast. She, despite many blisters just liked to walk.
The meseta has a mesmerizing spirit about it. It is a relatively flat trail with miles and miles of dirt path ahead, grain fields as far as you can see and few trees. I think I just described North Dakota! For some reason as I walked today I thought about my friend-sister's son Jared and how much I thought he would have enjoyed walking this pilgrim road. I could visualize the connections he would have made with all the fellow sojourners.
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| Meseta |
At one point, the road became quite muddy and so a very narrow trail had been established through the wheat field that hugged the road. Although I felt bad about walking through someone's field, the damage had already been done and it seemed much preferable to another day of heavy boots.
By the time we arrived in Hontanas, we were hungry so had a quick lunch before we continued on our way to Castrojeriz, our destination for the day. After hearing the story about the young couple who ate the hemlock, we noticed just how frequent it could be found growing along the edge of the road.
Just outside of Castrojeriz, we came upon what I would term the first irritation I have experienced on the camino. There was a sign upon which someone had written, "This isn't Hollywood, go home you "The Way" tourists". Since watching this movie was what precipitated our decision to go on this journey, I guess I took personal afront to such words. In the end, I decided whoever wrote it had far less a camino spirit than most anyone who was on this road as an outcome of seeing the movie.
Shortly thereafter was Ruina del Convento de San Anton, the ruins of an old pilgrim hospital from the 1400's. There was something actually quite comforting about pilgrims from so long ago being cared for on their journey, just as we are being cared for by the many hospiteros at our albergues.
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| Ruina del Convento San Anton |
The city of Castojeriz takes it's name from a castle, now in ruins, that overlooks the city. We decided to stay in the Albergue Casa Nostra, a good choice as the hospitalero washed and dried our dirty clothes, a very welcome service. Despite having so few, or maybe because of, It seems that we cannot keep on top of dirty clothes. Something really needs to be washed each day but we don't always feel like it so put off until the next day only to arrive later than planned so.... dirty clothes!
Since I was still feeling under the weather and we were running low on Sport Legs, we went in search of a farmacia to get some vitamin C and magnesium tablets. It was four o'clock and they were closed until five for siesta time so we made good use of the hour by having a glass of wine with a plate of cheese and salami.
On the way back to the albergue to deposit our precious purchase from the farmacia, we came upon a place called "The Restful Soul", a modern day peregrino hospital. Hospital in this sense really referred to a hospital for the soul, not the body. There was incense burning, music playing and photographs on the walls with words of wisdom displayed below each. There was such a sense of calm and beauty here, that we really did feel a healing of the soul. Some of the words of wisdom that spoke to me were "The secret to relations is to ask much of yourself and little of others" and "What we are doing is just like a drop in the ocean but if that drop will not be there something will be missing." And one particularly for the camino, "The miracle is not to fly or walking on water, but walking on the earth."
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| The Restful Soul |
The most amazing moment of the day for me was upon leaving that place, I found a white feather, something that had special meaning for Jared whom I had thought of so much during the day. The day was now complete.
We had a delightful dinner with Jim and Marilyn; as we were leaving who should appear but our English friend, Elaine. We had not seen her since shortly after Pamplona so were very pleased to know she was doing well.
Lesson for the Day: Pleasant surprises abound if you look for them.
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