Walking the Camino de Santiago
The bell tower of the Iglesia de Santa María La Mayor is surmounted by several stork nests, and here in the spring the birds themselves are flying all over the town. The church itself was originally a medieval castle chapel, and it was substantially rebuilt in the 16th and 20th centuries. Sadly, it was not open when we passed through. […]
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Day ten dawns, and Eamon, Viola, and I get walking! Here we are actually in the town of Belorado, after having stayed the night in an albergue just outside town. We all felt much better after a good night’s rest, and in my case cold meds and three boxes of orange juice. We’re looking for a place for breakfast, but […]
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This was the last photo I took that day. I was miserably ill and missing Francine. All attempts to contact her failed due to having basically zero signal strength. Viola gave me something for my cold, which helped tremendously. Tomorrow was a much better day all around. This photo will feature as the cover of the upcoming issue of La […]
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Our Belorado albergue / holiday camp featured what I previously described as a “low-rent Disneylandesque people-mover pulled by a fake old-timey steam locomotive”. I don’t think my description actually did it justice. You decide. Date: 10 April 2013Place: somewhere just before Belorado (Province of Burgos, Castilla y León, Spain)Today started: Santo Domingo de la Calzada (La Rioja, Spain)
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I took few photos that afternoon as we continued battling fierce headwinds, and I personally was sick with a cold. When we arrived at the outskirts of Belorado at about 4:30 PM, we three literally checked into the first place we came to. It seems to primarily be a holiday camp or something, complete with low-rent Disneylandesque people-mover pulled by […]
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These faithful hounds guard a house in Villamayor. The one in the back has had its legs broken, and the body is propped awkwardly atop the feet. I’m not sure why I was so fascinated with these – I took three different photos of them. Perhaps they reflected my mood at the time; I was feeling a little broken myself […]
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There’s no way around it. These days, the village of Villamayor is basically a truck stop on the N-120. The full name of the place is Villamajor del Río, and my guidebook notes that it is sometimes called “the place of three lies” as the “major” implies a large town, where this is a small village, and the creek it’s […]
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This. This is the Meseta. Or a great deal of it, anyway. For a couple of weeks, the Camino crosses this great central Spanish plateau, home of endless fields of grain. Many pilgrims these days choose to skip some or all of the Meseta, but I think this is a mistake. It’s flat. It’s boring. It’s empty. It’s lonely. Yes, […]
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This iconic sign appears after a solid bit of roadwalking from Viloria de Rioja, just as the Camino is about to rejoin the N-120 highway. I’ve no idea what it means or how long it’s been there. We saw it in 2013, and it was still there in 2016. Although it’s meaning is unknown (to me, at least), I think […]
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As I’ve mentioned over the past few days, our spirits were pretty low on this stretch of the Camino. We were exhausted, walking into the wind, and I was sick with a cold. And then, in this unassuming little village, we passed a group of pilgrims. For once, we were not the slowest pilgrims! Huzzah! The very thought gave us […]
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