Pilgrims on the Way

A rare montage! Just before Hontanas, there’s a tiny shrine to St. Bridget. The question is: which one? Based on the head covering and book, you would think this is St. Bridget of Ireland (c. 451 – 525). But based on the inscription that runs around the inside of the dome, where it mentions her Camino, it is more likely to be […]

Most towns on the Meseta tend to be on hills for defensive reasons; many of them were founded in a time when raiders and bandits (and the occasional army) were common. Some, though, like Hontanas, took another route. It’s in a valley – more of a hole, really – and you can’t see it until you’re practically on top of […]

This is a photo that I think every pilgrim takes. Sometimes more than once. Since the Camino is basically an east to west walk, and you spend most of the morning walking, you’re often walking into your shadow. Since San Bol is just off the main Camino, I could get a sideways image like this while walking the access road. […]

I feel like our plan was always to set out at dawn each day, but that this was one of the vanishingly few days where we actually did so. And it was glorious. Strangely, Francine and I did exactly the same thing at this location three years later. Note the lack of cloud coverage. It’s going to be a scorcher! […]

Day 13 dawns, the Third Sunday of Easter, and we bid San Bol farewell. Our hospitalero turned off the site’s generator when he left, about 9PM, so it was lights out! We left early enough that the sun was still dawning, throwing a golden light over the Meseta. Our plan is to grab breakfast in Hontana in maybe an hour […]

It was something of a running joke: Eamon loves his flan for dessert! Places with a pilgrim menu or a menú del día would always have more or less the same dessert options: fruit, pastry, or flan. So far as I can recall, Eamon always chose the flan. It usually came in this sort of plastic container, though very occasionally […]

Albergue San Bol is one of the great places on the Camino. Felix the hospitalero made a delicious dinner for us, which we ate in the round dining room under the “beehive”. Eamon and I were joined by German and Irish pilgrims, and eventually Santiago, seen here on the far left. I took numerous photos inside San Bol that evening, […]

Albergue San Bol is on a short spur off the main path. It looks for all the world like a beehive, but I think it was originally some sort of agricultural storage building. It’s run by the local parish in nearby Hontanas. It has 12 beds, and I’m pretty sure that Eamon and I got the last two. In the […]

After what must have been the longest 800m of my life, we finally spotted the little albergue in the middle of nowhere: San Bol. If you look carefully (or, you know, zoom in) you will spot it off to the left in this photo, in the shadow of a lovely grove of trees. As you can tell from the quality […]

It was about a quarter to six when we came upon this second sign for the Albergue San Bol. This was a sign of pure hope. It was slightly more official than the previous sign, and it promised a respite in less than a kilometer! We might even be there by 6:00pm, perhaps in time for the dinner promised by […]