Via Podiensis: the Last of the Meseta
Vespers and Mass yesterday evening with the Benedictine sisters ended with the priest conferring individual blessings on each of us pilgrims.
Last night was just your average Tuesday night in León. That means that the streets were full of people talking and laughing in the outside terraces of cafés and bars, couples walking arm in arm through the streets, the voices of a children’s choir reaching us from their practice space somewhere above the café.
The city felt absolutely alive in a way that you rarely see in the United States. I very much love this way of living.
This morning, we had a donativo breakfast this morning at the albergue, which very much put me in mind of the breakfasts I had in France. Toast, cookies, coffee!
Tara and I again decided to walk together, since we are very good at pacing each other. We left just before 7 AM, with the goal being 32 km to Hospital de Órbigo. If, however, we fall short and end up in the previous village, I wasn’t going to cry about it.
The colors of the buildings in León are primarily autumnal, reds and yellows. Once we were out of the medieval core, the Camino followed major streets.
We walked past the monastery of San Marcos, which may be familiar to those of you who have seen the movie “The Way”, as this is the parador (fancy hotel) featured in the film.
We crossed a bridge over the river, and by 7:30 AM, we had left the bounds of the city of León for one of its many suburbs. The urban landscape changed not at all.
We were walking now along a four-lane boulevard that would eventually become the N-120 highway. We did divert from it briefly to climb an urban hill with bodegas in the hillside. An odd juxtaposition for sure!
About 8:15 AM, we passed a commercial bakery. The smell was unbelievably lovely. After this, I was looking for a place for second breakfast.
We stopped in a café in the suburb of La Virgen del Camino for a proper café con leche and Napoletana at about 8:30 AM.
Afterwards, we visited the Basilica of Our Lady of the Camino, where I prayed for the intentions. The Basilica is a thoroughly modern structure celebrating an apparition of the Blessed Virgin in the 16th century near here. The interior is uninspiring – particularly the side altars, which are literally just a shelf, a name, and a crucifix – but the high altar is clearly a baroque masterpiece salvaged from the previous building on the site.
I’d also like to talk a moment about the exterior. Again, thoroughly modern, but the figures on the front remind me of something out of Henson’s “The Dark Crystal”, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. They grab your attention, and they exude an emotion – a sense of pathos, perhaps – that makes you pause.
After this, we walked along the highway, first on an asphalt sidewalk, but relatively soon afterwards on a dirt road. Throughout the course of the day, the Camino would sometimes pull away from the highway through more rural terrain, but always we would return eventually.
This is, I suppose, inevitable since what is now the highway was in fact the original Camino route, improved, widened, and eventually paved through the centuries.
About 9:40 or so, we entered the village of Valverde de la Virgen. The little parish church, built in the 1980s, was locked. After this, just a few kilometers later we passed through San Miguel del Camino, which was a little more than a wide spot on the highway.
I put up the umbrella about 10:30. Perhaps fifteen minutes after this, we passed another one of those construction sites where they were building a bridge to nowhere.
After passing through a series of truckstops and isolated hotels, we arrived in the village of Villadangos del Páramo at about 11:25 AM. By this point we were roadwalking a couple of dozen meters from the highway. Most of what I could see was clearly modern construction. And then the Camino crossed the highway and took a sharp right, and we found ourselves walking through a much older and rundown part of the village.
There were some nicer houses and gardens towards the end of the village, just before we passed over a concrete-lined stream and then briefly through the woods and into the plains.
Ah, Meseta! How I’ve missed you.
Here, we once more joined a gravel path next to the highway. It was about 11:42.
We stumbled into the village of San Martín del Camino at about 12:15. The water tower here made me briefly think that there was some sort of alien invasion that I hadn’t read about. The tracker indicated that we had walked 27 km, which was somewhat further than the maps or guidebooks had suggested.
Some days you feel strong, and some days you don’t.
And some days you start out strong, and then sort of collapse like a soufflé. That was me today. It took me twenty minutes to take off my socks. It was past 1:30 by the time I was showered and had lunch in front of me.
Date: 11 October 2023
Place: San Martín del Camino
Today started: León
Today’s Photos!
