Month: October 2014

Charlie.

Charlie.

Charlie

Charlie

Charlie. The old doors are interesting.

Wynette. This morning outside Villabilla, just before the Camino crossed a busy highway via an overpass, a woman rode up on a bicycle, coming from the opposite direction, and pretty much demanded that we stop and listen to her. She (woman in hat above) told us that the Camino signs pointed left ahead but that we should go right. She said the left turn is a road construction detour, but since it is Saturday we can go the original way and save 3 km. By that time she had stopped several other pilgrims. She seemed Asian but spoke fluent English, Spanish, and French. She told us her name is Maria Mercedes and she mostly spends her time helping people and that people call her an angel.

She was going on and on a bit so we finally said we needed to keep going. When we came to the turn, instead of following her advice, we decided to follow the left-pointing signs, influenced by a Spanish pilgrim who thought her advice was bad. A short way past the turn there she was again behind us. By then, she had collected about eight pilgrims. She singled me out twice saying I hadn’t trusted her but said she was a long-time resident of Villabilla and was only there to help, and repeated that she was an angel. She convinced all of us to follow her across the bridge.

The way ahead through the construction area was clear. We saw old Camino markers and Charlie remembered going that way our first Camino. We aren’t convinced the non-detour saved us 3 kilometers but all worked out fine. Because of it we ended up walking with a nice woman, Pernilla, from Sweden (who is now at our albergue) and another nice woman, Jane, from England.

It is a few hours later and we are resting in lovely Albergue Liberanos Domine in Rabe de Las Calzadas. I’m pretty sure Maria Mercedes (with the bicycle below) stayed a few more hours by the Camino convincing pilgrims to trust her and turn right over the overpass.

(Janis Joplin) Charlie. Wynette had a cold in Grañón so we took a taxi to Belorado. We got picked up in the square, shown above. In the Mercedes taxi. In front of all the pilgrims resting before the long walk to Belorado.  But we were fine with it.

We got out and walked to Villafranca, probably too far, Wynette was tired.

It turns out that it is common for bar owners to run taxi services, ours did.

Charlie. Yesterday Wynette was still recovering from her cold so I walked from Villafranca to Atapuerca by myself. She took most of the stuff with her in the taxi so I was only carrying about five pounds instead of over 20. I wanted to start early so I was first to breakfast at 7am. Wynette said she was last at 9am.

I left at 7:20 and it was pitch black out. Due to some combination of latitude and position in time zone the sun rises an hour later here than in Albuquerque.

I had to use the flashlight app on my phone for a half hour before it was light enough to avoid tripping on rocks on the trail. The photo above is how I had to read the Camino signs.

I took a selfie as I was starting in the dark.

I got to Atapuerca in 4.5 hours and met up with Wynette at the albergue. We were happy to see each other.

More at
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/natsn9gmm5e3ilc/AABBWtBZgV1zIKt-nBru85OCa

I finally got around to updating the “live” map of our trip. You can find it on the “Camino Links” menu at the top of the blog or here.

It shows three lines. The upper one is our 2013 walk. The lower one is our planned 2014 walk. The middle one is our actual 2014 walk.

A red line section means we didn’t walk that segment, taxi or bus. The other colors we did, or planned to, walk. The checkbooks at the top control which lines are shown. The color of the checkbook labels is the color of the walked line sections.