We left Leon after our rest day and really stepped it out and arrived at St Martin at 12.45pm. Stayed at the first hostal on the edge of town - Vieria Albergue - brand new and only 5E each for a 4 bed room ! We kept waiting for other pilgrims to arrive to fill up the place but very few did - and there were only 10 in for the night ! Couldn´t fault the place - clean, good meals and very friendly. Gabe and Mads even had a swim there. Today we left at 7am and have just made it to Astorga at 12.45pm. gabe has been troubled today with a sore knee - looks like a cartilage tear. Got the ice on it now and given him an anti-inflammatory. Had a good walk today through the countryside - wheat, tobacco being the main crops. Staying at public hostal in Astorga - 4E each and 4 of us in one room ! Almost heaven !
Caught up with our old friend with the rudimentary Maori tattoo a couple of days back. Finally asked him his name and he replied "Ban" - we must have looked flummoxed because he wrote it down = Van ! Of course the Spanish have no V sound - "Ban the man " doesn´t quite have the same ring as "Van the man" though ! Also met a young guy from Barcelona who worked for Avis Rental cars so I asked him how the Spanish pronounced Avis - again they don´t pronounce the V and sort of swallow it as a b sound. Must be a corporate headoffice nightmare for marketing !
Calculate that we have 10 walking days to go, Deo volente. Mads is enjoying the walking now and Gabe is always happiest after food - 2 hamburgers for lunch today ! The constant walking is tough on the body so they are showing good mental strength ! A fellow pilgrim praised us for our family´s progress because he had met a French family who had given up after a couple of days and gone back to Paris to do some shopping ! Several bits of graffiti along the way suggest that the REAL camino is the internal one you make along the way - so we have yet to fully determine what that means for each of us !
Most people think that we are either from England or USA and are floored when we say NZ ! They always ask how we came to hear of the camino too.
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Yeah, Astorga! Beautiful place, and it means the end of the worst of the highway walking!!
ReplyDeleteIf your experience is anything like mine, maybe you know the 'internal' Camino has happened when you have stopped walking and been home a while...