Walking the Camino de Santiago
After lunch in a dive bar that advertised “perrito calliente” for €2 as their lunch special, we made our way to the Romanesque masterpiece of the Iglesia de San Martín de Tours. It was built in the 11th century as part of a monastery, now long gone. The tower was added in the 15th century. After a long period of […]
» Read more
It was not quite 11 am when we entered the agricultural town of Frómista. Even so, we had started early in the day, and we were looking for lunch. Sightseeing would have to wait! Although the town is considered a major overnight stopping place for pilgrims, we would be pushing on towards Carrión de los Condos. Yes, it would be […]
» Read more
This is a view looking down the lock that the Camino crosses over the Canal de Castilla. The literature and signs indicate that the locks are no longer in use, but the machinery and the infrastructure still appear in pretty good shape. These days, the canals are used primarily for irrigation, rather than the barge transportation for which they were […]
» Read more
After Boadilla del Camino, the Camino follows part of the Canal de Castilla, a 207 km long commercial waterway constructed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This part of the walk was quite pleasant; it was not yet hot, and a cool breeze breeze blew through the trees that lined the canal. The photo is of one of the […]
» Read more
Boadilla del Camino isn’t the prettiest town – indeed, my notes for 2016 indicate that we walked right through it – but in 2013, Eamon and I were determined to grab a quick second breakfast here. So we wandered about a bit before stumbling on this place. Inside, we ran into Mia from Ireland, who we had last seen in […]
» Read more
After about an hour’s walk, we spotted the town of Boadilla del Camino on the horizon. Eamon and I were walking at a clip. However, distances on the seemingly endless Meseta are deceiving: it would be more than an hour after this photo was taken before we were actually walking into town. Date: 15 April 2013Place: between Itero de la […]
» Read more
While earlier in the Camino – in Navarra and La Rioja – the villages are rarely more than an hour apart, this changes dramatically in the Meseta. We have left Itero de la Vega, and the next village is Boadilla del Camino, a distance of about 9km or more than two hours. The flat stretched to the horizon, and my […]
» Read more
Just as you leave the village of Itero de la Vega, you will come upon this abandoned house, painted in… well, whatever this is. In 2016, I got a better photo of the portion with the psychedelic gnomes. Here, I chose to focus on the section from Nightmare Before Christmas. As we started out of town, though we didn’t know […]
» Read more
This little unnamed plaza is located in the village of Itero de la Vega, where Calle Santa María crosses Calle Pisuerga. All along the Camino, the sort of marker you see here has been associated with medieval boundaries. Since this is literally in the middle of the town, that’s not the case here. This is called the Rollo de justicia […]
» Read more
Good morning! It’s about eight o’clock in the morning of Monday, 15 April 2013, in the village of Itero de la Vega, and Eamon and I are walking on our way out of town and down the Way. This spoon caught my eye as we walked. It was stuffed into the crumbling brickwork of a building we passed in the […]
» Read more