Santiago by Seventy - 11

Day 13 - Tuesday 24th April Belorado to San Juan de Ortega

Lisa is going to ferry our bags to San Juan, and while stowing them into her car, I notice a Dutch couple, who I had noted before were very well prepared for the Camino - the woman even has a nylon zip case for her sticks, lurking behind a pillar.    My actions instinctively become furtive, until I realise that they are waiting for the bus to Burgos and are also cheating.

We set out about 0830 in the company of Dave Smith and his sister Maggie.  They too are using a luggage ferry for some surprisingly large suitcases, and carrying only day bags.   Dave has a tablet which uses to take photos – is this something I should have instead of my tiny laptop.   The windows of anm albergue are open and Penny peeps in to see the bunk accommodation and agress she wopuldn’t mind, for anight or two.

It’s a much better day and the wind has dropped.   Tosantos is closed, but at Villambistia a sign hopefully points to a bar at 100m.    The Spanish idea of distance can be understated, and just when we think of giving up, we find ‘Alabama’ ensconced at the bar – talking, of course.  We enjoy a great coffee and bocadillo stuffed with a ‘French’ tortilla i.e. no potato or garlic, and learn that ‘Giggling Dave’ has also caught a bus to Burgos.

We pass Espinosa del Camino chatting and with noticing it.

The bridge at Villafranca Montes de Oca is lethal:   very narrow and large trucks whizz through the narrow streets, and stepping to the side to avoid one, I don’t see or hear a small van until it brushes my pack.   Penny sees a shop and cannot resist going in to see what they have.  

The path leads up through the village past the church, rated as one of the most important churches on the pilgrim route:  it is closed, of course.

 But the Queen’s Hospice, the 3* hotel-restaurant-albergue of San Anton Abad, is one of the most delightful places on earth.   Newly restored, beautifully appointed, the staff and owners friendly and helpful, we seriously consider calling Lisa and suggesting that this is where we will end our pilgrim walk.    The owner shows me a choice of courtyards where we can rest, and we chose a sunny walled yard out of the breeze where we can also watch and wave to our fellow pilgrims as they walk by.    Although it is early, by Spanish hours, the kitchen is opened to give us lunch, and my glass of tinto is a veritable bucket.  When I explain that I have come from St Jean but Penny has just joined me for a couple of days, the owners make Penny an honorary pilgrim and give her a gourd to carry, bearing the stamp of the San Anton Abad.

Sinfully, the guidebook hardly gives it a mention in his guidebook.

This would be an excellent stopover before tackling the next 12 kms through oak woods and pine forest, along which there is not much more than a single fountain, called Mojapán (wet-your-bread).    It is a delightful walk down dale and up, following a broad path, presumably the old road which would, in England, be a sheep-drovers’ trail.   A feature is a monument to los Caídos where a new plaque slightly confuses the issues about who it is to – 300 Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War.   In the undergrowth behind the monument, a smaller, humbler, headstone commemorates the Republicans who also died here.

It is a delightful walk, sometimes chatting, sometimes in companionable silence, with Penny.   Dry and sunny, and the wind has dropped.   There are buzzards crying overhead, and we spot a woodpecker.

It is not often you meet a beautiful woman strolling through the forest with her handbag over her arm, but Lisa has walked up the trail to meet us, and we finish the last three kilometres together into San Juan de Ortega.

This has been the longest and the most beautiful day of the Camino, 26.8 kilometres or 15 miles, and with magnificent views over snow covered mountains to the south and west.   

San Juan de Ortega is the target for this first phase of my Camino:  I think I am, about a third of the way or 250 km towards Santiago.   ‘Do you want to go on?’ Penny asks.  The answer is emphatically, ‘Yes’, I want and need to finish this by coming back in the autumn or more probably next spring, 2013.   

La Henera, the new casa rural is not quite what I imagined:   I had failed to weigh the significance of the word ‘new’:  it is fine but soulless.   In fact San Juan seems a curious place for the guidebook to show as the end of a stage of the Camino, as it is tiny and all the only bar can offer is platos combinados.   The bread and garlic soup which once was offered by the monastery is not on offer.

I attend the pilgrim mass and get my blessing by the tomb of the saint, disciple of Santo Domingo.   The priest is less forbidding than the one in Roncesvalles.   There we non-Catholics were forbidden to take communion.   Here I detect a slight difference in emphasis:   those who wish to be in communion are invited to take the host.

Afterwards, sitting on sheltered stone bench I talk to Ingrid, a little old Dutch-Australian lady who tells me her life story and how worried her daughters are about her being here, alone on the road.    She started from St Jean a week before me, is making only 15 kms a day, and is worried that she may not get to Santiago by her target date, which is Pentecost.    Ingrid also has two tin knees.   She also tells me that though she, like me, is Protestant, she took Communion – ‘Would God refuse nourishment to his believers if they were invited to his table?’   Good point.  Then comes a surprise, somehow I have her categorised as her little old grey-haired lady needing to chat, but she tells me she is 68, only a year older than me.  We form a foursome for dinner, and I get to eat lomo (pork) and morcilla de Burgos (blackpudding).  

Unexpectedly David the Canadian starts to talk to me about Admiral Rodney, and I would have listened quietly, but hopefully knowingly, but Penny tells him of my amateur interest in the subject.   It is a typically, unexpected, varied conversation on this Camino.