I doubled up on a stage, this is 16 not 15 ( I think I did 2 13s…not to worry).
The town pavers were shiny from the night’s rain but streaks of blue in the steely grey sky suggested rain was done for the day…perhaps.
This far in it’s difficult not to run into fellow pilgrims you’ve met along the way. It’s kind of nice really, one big family, moving along together.
We almost fall over Karen from Germany walking out our Albergue door. We met Karen sitting on a grass bank, eating a carrot as we climbed up the Pyrenees on our first day. We get coffee together at a little bar up the road before we head out of town.
We’re in the ‘Meseta’ now (from Borgus to Astorga), two hundred odd kilometers of high, vast and predominantly flat plateau. At our pace, that’s 10 to 12 days of featureless silence. I’m looking forward to it. Apparently it strikes fear into the hearts of many, quite a number skip it altogether but if today’s any indication, it’ll be great.
After a brief second stop to pick up a GF tortilla, we head off through town and out into the meadows, leaving Borgus’ wide paved streets and squares and towering, intricate cathedral behind us.
Our first rest stop at Tardajos has us at 12km and past half way, and we’re a little chuffed that our bodies seem to be getting used to the daily walking. Pilgrims are queued at a small Cafe for coffee and hot food after a brief rain shower and a cool morning (the loos always get a good work out too), there are ponchos drying out over backpacks and chairs everywhere
In this town lived the “Burgos Leonardo”, a Spanish priest and inventor, Mariano Díez Tobar (1868–1926) who developed a device for projecting photographic images in motion (effectively cinematography but prior to the Lumiers), a device to convert voice to writing, a voice activated clock and a new scientific language, but I think we were more taken with the massive stork nests and the birds’ peculiar clicking sounds.
Down the road at Rabe and only about 7km out of Hornillos a lovely old nun stamping pilgrams’ passports takes the opportunity to bless each one and put a small token (of the apostles we think), around our necks. Catholic or no, it was a lovely and well meant gesture and a hushed, almost tearful silent joy prevailed as this bright eyed old nun blessed and hugged us all.
Walking out of the church, with dark storm clouds boiling black on our horizon we hope her prayers had something at least, to do with keeping dry.
In moments thunder starts booming and rolling down the valley and it’s clear we’re not going to escape this one. The wind picks up turning the wheat fields into vast green oceans, lightning strikes and as the first heavy drops start to fall we make for a tin shelter we spy on the edge of a small wood. We just make it before rain and then hail smash down deafeningly on the little tin roof. We wait it out with two Canadian ladies who dash in a little later and damper than us and swap tales as the storm passes over head.
Back on the road we pass, or are passed by, others emptying water from boots and ringing out jackets and we thank the sister for her help :-).
Maybe 4km out of Hornillos the road descends the “Cuesta mata mulas” or mule killing incline. We’re not sure how many mules drew their last breath here but their restinh place certainly affords pilgrims wonderful views.
In Hornillos there’s a chicken on an obelisk in the square. It commemorates the passing through of Napolean’s army who, allegedly, stole and killed all the towns’ chickens and hid them in their drums. The practicalities of this maneuver render it unlikely in my view, but let’s go with it. Towns people complained to leaders who confronted their men. ‘Nothing to see here’, exclaimed the soldiers, ‘just us and our stinky chicken gut filled drums’. At that point (I’m just relaying the story OK), a plucked and gutted rooster jumped up inside one of the drums and crowed, thus revealing the dastedly deed and the guilty parties. And of course a miracle was proclaimed, a bigger church built and little stalls set up to collect pilgrim money etc. Etc.
Aura Jacobea, our little albergue, is new, having opened only in April this year. Our hosts are lovely and we dine at table with twelve, to enjoy their home cooked paella and red wine. We speak with Herman and his wife from the Netherlands who have Doctor and jazz musician sons, and two kiwis Michael and Carolyn, a physicist and nurse, their Protestant world view seemingly sorely tested by the sign seeking Catholics steeped in the ways of a pre-reformation church. It so it seemed to us.
We wander 200m up town to a larger albergue with an unlikely heavy metal bar, drink a one euro ten glass of wine (of not unexpected quality) and call it a night.
