Pilgrims on the Way

We stopped for lunch in the same place at Calzadilla de la Cueza where I had stopped for lunch three years previous. This time it was cold enough that we lunched indoors rather than out. Fun fact: three years ago I forgot my fleece on one of the chairs here and didn’t realize it until we were already an hour […]

After four or five hours of cross-Meseta trek, we arrive at last in the tiny village of Calzadilla de la Cueza (population 52). Large sections of this village are abandoned, and the major business seems to be agriculture and catering to pilgrims. We immediately sought out a spot for a late lunch. Date: 17 April 2016 Place: Entering Calzadilla de […]

After we got through the worst of the flooded bits, we spent hours and hours walking through the Meseta, the endless flat. I took about a dozen photos that over the course of four hours that are all pretty much variations on this theme. Even so, there were other flooded portions. At various points we were obligated to jump wide […]

Finally, we reached a place where the water was covering the Camino to a depth guaranteed to soak through your hiking shoes. We did the only logical thing: we took off our shoes and socks and forded the water. And boy howdy, was that water COLD. You’ll note that in this photo, Francine is just at the shallow part. It […]

Because it’s a long four or five hour stretch after Carrión de los Condes before the next village, everybody packs their second breakfast and lunch. The local government has thoughtfully provided picnic areas like this every so often along this part of the Camino. As you can see, they were less useful this time than one might normally expect. Date: […]

A couple of kilometers up the Camino, we come to the first place with standing water on the road. Fortunately, it wasn’t particularly deep, and it was relatively easy to cross without getting your shoes too wet. It was, however, a harbinger of things to come. Date: 17 April 2016 Place: Between Carrión de los Condes and Calzadilla de la […]

In the long, straight stretch between Carrión de los Condes and Calzadilla de la Cueza, the Camino crosses a number of seasonal streams. As you can see, there’s quite a lot of water, as the streams have overflowed their banks and flooded the nearby farmland. It would soon get worse. All throughout the day, we passed wells and concrete irrigation […]

Across the boulevard from the Monasterio de San Zoilo is a series of monuments depicting the arms of the Kingdoms and regions of Northern Spain through which the various Camino routes pass. From left to right, these are: Aragon, Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y León, Asturias, and Galicia. I am once again struck by the unabashedly Catholic symbolism to be […]

On the way out of Carrión de los Condes, we walked along a boulevard overlooking floodwaters of the Río Carrión on the right. On the left, we passed the massive Monasterio De San Zoilo. It was originally a Benedictine monastery that joined the Congregation of Cluny in the 11th century. The fortunes of the Cluniac monks waxed and waned over […]