27-05-2018
Walked 24.2 km, 6 hours 15 minutes
Ascent: 460 meters
Descend: 210 meters
Kilometers to be traveled: 531.5
The day comes on my third walking Sunday of this camino, the 2nd in Spain. We take it by not sleeping late and leaving on time. According to our schedule it’s not going to be a very long day, so we can take it easy. It’s slowly starting to look like my backpack is getting smaller and lighter, I guess it will be my imagination.
The sun is shining, what more do we want to sleep in, maybe for a long time, but I think that I am now in such a rhythm that it is no longer in it, or better written. We start with a group of 5, looking for an opportunity to have breakfast. With the sun in your back and the shadow in front of you, it is wonderful to walk along beautiful tight gravel paths. And in the next village we come to a cafe / alberge where 2 people are having breakfast.
All 5 of us step inside and are greeted warmly by the employee with a temper from you there: let me calmly prepare everything, I don’t want to start that early on a Sunday. Outside is a beautiful wooden sculpture of a pilgrim, on the wall a beautiful painting, so you expect a little warmth, but unfortunately. So we bring in a little good mood ourselves, a few more pilgrims follow after us.
After the usual breakfast we continue on the gravel path through bare meadows, pastures with green corn and then through wooded area. We pass a monument for fallen victims during the Spanish revolution: Monumento la Pedraja. It is a road that goes up and down with quite steep parts.
Then the road turns into a red clay path, it seems. Along the side beautiful shrubs that are in full bloom, it also smells delicious. It is quite busy with hikers in the last hour, perhaps because we all have to go the extra mile to complete the way up. The part that we walk through is devoid of any snack, no cafe or shop, village or town nearby.
Then you still pass by a location where a few Spaniards earn a penny. Along the road are wooden trunks with place name signs, or just pieces of trunk, some processed, others neatly arranged as a group. On the other hand, snacks are prepared, or other food that you can take for a voluntary donation level. So a short break for the photos and the inner person.
To follow the road is not difficult, you just have to follow the others, the arrows now seem superfluous. The road winds on, past trees with fungi on the trunk, picking trees with cotton on the branches and a meadow with a group of donkeys who look at the other donkeys with backpacks. We do not have a clear blue sky above us, but a blue sky with beautiful white clouds.
The Monasterio de San Juan de Ortega is also a famous stop along the route. You should be able to spend the night in the monastery, but I skip this, it is still a bit early to stop. The church is beautiful and is being prepared for baptism. It is lunchtime, so take a break again. There are also buses with the tourist pilgrims, those who spend the night in hotels and some days walk for 5 to 10 miles without anything.
The road continues, through a light forest on a ridge. It smells wonderful, enjoy what is around you. A few stone circles have been laid on a grassy plain, but they must be of a recent date than those of Stonehenge. The road then slowly goes down the mountain, our overnight place comes into view, Agés. Again a typical overnight village on the route.
Looking for an inn we see Oliver and Victor, they have been without a trace for 2 days, but now they are no longer. There is still room in the inn, they become upper beds, but that doesn’t matter: rather an upper bed than no bed. When I have made the bed I send a message home, call and rest, take a shower and have a beer. Walking around makes little sense, because the sun is so bright that it invites you to sit in the sun for a while.
And then there must be another moment when the blessings from above must report. Then it’s time for the blog vlogger to get started. The internet is not very fast, so I do everything just a bit so-so. Let’s see where we eat tonight, in the alberge, but then we have to sign up, otherwise there is a shortage of place settings.
There are few things that can speed up time, so just take a short nap. At dinner time, we gather 10 people in the café section of the alberge. Oops, the landlady had not seen this coming for a while, preparing a very large table. But it’s no problem if we can wait another 10 minutes. We get a large table and can choose from a stripped menu, it was busy today in the restaurant, so the choice was huge and is now mini. But it’s okay, we fill our stomachs with what is still full, even though they are dishes that we have not eaten before, like me: pork cheek.
The wine flowed generously, which resulted in an early (22 hours) bedtime. The dormitory is not very busy yet, but it is quiet, everything is full, the hustle and bustle on the highway is complete.
Accommodation: Albergue Municipal
