Today on the walk we passed this mailbox. The photo hides it but it was mounted on a pole at about the height of a typical US rural mailbox. But note that it was pointed upwards instead of sideways so it caught my attention. And it looked like a typical rural US mailbox. Then I noticed that it said “US Mail” on top. Cool. For some reason I (totally unconsciously) opened it up. And to my shock, there was a loaf of bread inside! That’s when I realized I was looking inside someone’s private mailbox. I quickly closed it and hoped no one in the house saw me do that.
We get a kick out of the fact that people in Spain get bread delivery just like we in the US get newspaper delivery. In the photo I posted yesterday of the older woman waving out the window, her bread delivery person had just left bread in her window sill. We often see bread in a bag hanging on gates and such.
The past two days especially, we’ve seen some stunning churches. I showed photos of the romanesque church in Santillana del Mar yesterday. I’ll post some photos below of churches we passed today. It amazes me how low key people here are about these magnificent buildings. In the US they’d be major tourist attractions, I think. Henry and Moira, I always think of you when we see these.
Iglesia de San Pedro, west of Oreña
The above is all by itself in a large field west of Oreña. It’s quite large. When we passed it in 2018 we heard beautiful music coming from it that lured us inside. This year it was closed. There were two other pilgrims there wanting to go inside. Here is our 2018 blog post about this church, with some more photos: https://wynchar.com/cnblog/2018/04/29/church-in-the-field/
We continued along the camino and not too much later came across this one.
Back of Iglesia de Cigüenza, built in 1600s.Front of Iglesia de Cigüenza. It was closed.
And then not much further along:
Iglesia de San Pedro in Cóbreces, Built in late 1800s.
And almost next door:
Well, not exactly a church. Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria de Viaceli. Built early 1900s.
Hard to capture these in photos, especially the last two. They loom over the town of Cóbreses. Striking!
You see these plastic wrapped rolls of hay all the time as you are walking. It seems like a good idea. I haven’t tried to lift one but I imagine they are pretty heavy and it seems very unlikely that one might roll away in the wind unless they had one heck of a storm. We have never seen one weighted down until today when we saw these.
Worst case scenario: a freak wind pushes one over and it starts rolling down the hill towards those buildings in the distance. It goes faster and faster building up a tremendous momentum and smashes into a building completely destroying it. Could happen.
Miles: 7.4 miles, from 3 to 374, 915 feet up, 735 feet down Dogs in bars: 2 Dogs Charlie played ball with in bars: 1 Rude pilgrims who hogged a whole three-person bench for him and his backpack and warned us not to sit there while we sat on cold cement steps: 1, but we are definitely not bitter about it, we just shrugged it off and forgot about it (until now) Stunning churches: 4 Number of hotels that were not yet open for the season that we called before finding one for tonight: 4 Lentil stews for hungry pilgrims: 2, one each
A fairly short day but that is fine with us. Lots of up and down, as usual.
We stopped at a charming local bar run, it seemed, by a middle-aged couple. They made us fried eggs and toast. Their two dogs were in and out looking mournful like dogs do implying they really aren’t fed enough. One dropped his tennis ball at my feet so I had to play with him, rolling the ball on the floor for him to fetch. The ice cream middle man was there talking to the owner. He brought a new ice cream sign to display. Several other pilgrims stopped in while we were there.
Can you spot the dogs?
The only downside was that the coffee was a bit watery. We do not have high coffee standards but some are too watery and others have a rich full flavor.
The rude guy story speaks for itself.
We stayed in Cóbreces in April 2018 and it was fairly busy but this time every hotel was closed for some reason and there were no bars open. We made those calls two days ago so we got a place in the next little town, Trasierra, 1.5 miles away.
Trasierra has only one bar (tiny). It advertised food but only had tortillas. We are staying in a hotel-restaurant but the restaurant is closed and we are the only people in the place. Nonetheless we are currently sitting in their closed restaurant because the host told us to make ourselves at home. And he gave us some delicious lentils with sausage. So we are quite happy.
Making ourselves at home in the closed hotel restaurantTasty lentils for lunch
Saying goodbye to lovely Ana, the owner of Pension Oreña where we stayed last nightWe are back near the ocean again after being more inland the last few daysAlbergue in small town we walked throughShe waved at us as we passed. I asked if I could take a photo. She smiled “yes” and stood up straighter. The bread truck had just stopped and left a loaf in her lower left window. Can you see it? You might have to blow up the picture.We passed a small herd of llamas. So cute.
Since we arrived in Spain on April 9, we have stayed in 16 different hotels (aka pensions, apartamentos, etc.) I’m pretty sure every room we have been in has had a television. (A few were tiny tiny televisions.) We have yet to turn one on. We’ve tried watching TV on past trips in Spain, but haven’t enjoyed it much. They do have some good US or British shows but they are all dubbed into Spanish and it’s painful to watch for some reason. I’m sure I could find plenty of Spanish TV shows I’d enjoy watching and it would be good Spanish-listening practice. But, mainly, we don’t really have the time or energy.
Even though we are walking short days, it seems we stay so busy after we check into our hotel and have lunch. There’s (1) resting, (2) blogging and catching up with correspondence, (3) figuring out where to stay the next day, (4) figuring out where to have breakfast the next day, (5) exploring the town we are staying in if we do have some energy left, (6) maybe eat dinner, (7) misc. Doesn’t sound like much but it keeps us busy. So, we’re never even tempted to turn the TV on. But …
Today we found a good use for the TV in our room:
Our raincoats weren’t wet but we thought it would be good to be sure they are good and dry before storing them away in their sacks.
It never rained hard today but enough that we needed them off and on. It’s the first we’ve needed them in several days — since the day I lost and found mine (see posts about that a few days ago). So as not to lose one again, Ella, in the comments, suggested we use a carabiner to attach the raincoat to our backpack. I didn’t think there was any loop to attach a carabiner to but, I was wrong. There are tiny straps around the collar that I hadn’t noticed. They are perfect for attaching a clip. So, I used a clip on each side and confidently carried my raincoat hanging off my backpack today during the times it wasn’t needed to keep me dry. Thanks for the great suggestion, Ella!
Pilgrim Charlie. Didn’t realize how much his hat looks like a pilgrim hat as worn by the wooden pilgrim here. It’s a rain hat that our friend Vicki gave him before our first camino and Charlie has worn it on every camino since. He uses it as a sun hat as well. He’s mentioned several times just on this camino how much he likes it. Thank you, Vicki!No services in this tiny town tonight so we are blogging in our pension. No bar and decaf this afternoon.Cheese shop right on the farm, passed on walk today.Charlie took this photo today. The cow (bull?) was high above us and not quite as close as this close-up makes it look. I really liked the photo. So, it will be my final entry of “photos of the day.”
I think we posted a photo very much like the above in 2018. We stayed in Santillana del Mar on that Camino walk but went a few miles past it today. It’s a beautifully-preserved very old town. Quite lovely. It doesn’t feel like a “real” town. It’s essentially a museum with quite a number of tourist shops. But, certainly worth seeing. Has a beautiful Romanesque church that seemed to be closed.
Back of the churchFront of the churchOn the main street. Lots of cobblestones.
We had planned to eat breakfast in Santillana and were so lucky to find a bar a little off the main street where the kindest man made us fried eggs and toast.
I told Charlie we should mention in our blog that it’s not so much that we are huge fried egg and toast eaters, we hardly ever make it at home. It’s just that they do such a wonderful job making them here. The eggs are bright orange and cooked just right, slightly runny on the inside and sometimes kind of crispy on the outside. The toast is usually made from really good bread and today he served it with some butter and some wonderful peach jam that he served in a little bowl.
I’d be happy with the tortillas (Spanish omelette that is in every bar and mentioned in previous post) for breakfast but Charlie is not a fan. So, the best thing we’ve found for breakfast (when we decide not to just have muesli in our room) is eggs and toast.
We were on a walk yesterday and came upon this little playground.
I remember teeter-totters but not one made of a log. And, of course, the universal playground sign in the US has a teeter-totter on it even though no US playground has had a teeter-totter in many years. Far too dangerous for our delicate kids.
As it happens we were in a town a few days ago and we actually saw two kids playing on a teeter-totter. European playgrounds still have them, but, curiously, don’t use them on their signs.
This playground also had a swing.
The old kind, with a flat board seat that you could stand on and swing really high or sit on and jump off of at the top of the arc. The fun, exciting things that are too dangerous for modern kids to try.
We have a couple of apps that help us follow the Camino but when we get within a mile or so of our hotel we switch to good old Google maps directions. This is the road we were on:
I was getting spoken directions and it said “continue on California 340”. We did some searching and are not sure exactly what the “CA” is, possibly Cantabria, maybe carretera, but definitely not California. I assume there is a look-up table somewhere deep inside the Google Maps code that translates “ca” to “California”.
