Camino : Calzadilla de la Cueza to El Burgo Ranero

I woke up at 5:30 AM and it was quite strange to wake up in a place with 10 bunkbeds and no one occupying any of them. I got ready slowly and by 6:30AM, I was on the road.

Nowadays sunrise is a bit late, almost at close to 8AM so I was met with darkness. Today there was a 45% chance of rain up until noon, and sure enough, my rain jacket came in handy because it indeed was raining intermittently.

Using the headlamp, I kept walking. Since I had skipped dinner last night, I was so happy to serendipitously find a bag of pistachios in my backpack.

Munching on the pistachios, I walked in the dark ignoring the complaints of my feet. They stopped complaining after the bit and soon enough, I was at La Morena, the town on the route, which had an open bar at an early hour.

A coffee and a chocolate croissant revived my spirits, and I started walking.

I saw a couple of Spaniards from Madrid who were just doing seven days of walk from Burgos up to Leon.

They were walking a bit fast, but I was able to keep up with them. We passed a French couple which started in Burgos as well and were going to Santiago de Compostela.

This region had more artifacts celebrating the Knights Templar, who protected the pilgrims as they made their way historically to Santiago de Compostela

Usually people were walking 20 or 25 km a day, so once I met somebody, it was relatively certain that I would not see them again. This was because I was covering the distance in two days what they were covering in three.

However, there was a French bicyclist who was following my schedule of covering about 35 to 45 km a day and I was very surprised to run into him day in and day out. It used to be fantastic to see him because he had a very open and bright smile. He could not speak any English, so our conversation was limited to high-fives and sign language, but I had seen him at least five times and it helped that he ended up in the same municipal albergues as me.

I came across a fork in the Camino and the one going right was quite hilly, and I was not in the mood. So I stuck to the one which was straight ahead and seemed flat. That probably was a mistake, as I did not take the road less traveled.

I kept walking and came across a sign indicating that I was almost halfway done with the walk to Santiago de Compostela.

The beautiful farmlands and the greenery that extended all the way up to the horizon, never ceased to make me feel happy.

So far, I was in the Castilla province of Spain and now transitioning to the Léon province.

I came across a person who was walking in bit of a wrong direction. I waited for him and motioned him to come to the path I was on. He came and turned out to be a 23 year old Chinese university student who was about to finish his masters degree program in September and had couple of months free to walk this trail.

He had come with his girlfriend, and she had sustained an injury so she had taken a bus to the next town. He was quite tall and walked briskly, and I was soon left in the dust as he whizzed by.

It was still raining and I was walking slow. At the bend in the road, I saw many people, pilgrims, with their rain ponchos, taking a picture. It happened to be a monument with some beautiful sculptures next to it.

Very close to that part was a beautiful mural, commemorating the pilgrims.

Although I had seen many pilgrims from Europe, Australia, and America, I came across the first person from India. She was a young masters degree student, and had severe blisters on all parts of her feet. She was feeling miserable.

I came to the turn which would bring me to the big town of Sahagun and it seemed like it was the first place where school of music was established in the 12th century.

Seems like the problem of having blisters was widespread amongst the community of the pilgrims and in Sahagun there was a pharmacy dedicated to helping them out.

There were some interesting pilgrim sculptures along the way.

It kept raining, and I came across and Albergue with a sign indicating they served paella. I ordered the paella negra, the one made with squid ink that I enjoy a lot, however, after taking the order, they returned saying they did not have it. The seafood paella was my alternative and asked them to make it spicy. They made it spicy and it tasted fantastic.

As I ate, the rain stopped, and it was blue skies with sunshine.

There was a path with a beautiful Roman gate. The coat of arms looked very impressive as well. It was not on the Camino so I had discovered it by accident.

The path continued through a wooded area, which was next to the highway.

There was another area with two choices, which were pretty long, almost 20 kmon either side. I decided to take the path on the left, which would allow a total distance of 41 km ending up in El Burgo Ranero.

I was happy to see a road sign indicating that I had only 360 km left. That meant that I had walked almost 420 km already. I took it with a grain of salt because many of the signs were in conflict with each other, but the good part was that the distance was decreasing.

The rain had left, and it was good to see blue skies with a lot of puffy cotton clouds.

I was walking by Berciano Del Real Camino, the last town before my destination for the day.

The last 7 km were proving to be pretty difficult and I made very slow progress, one step at a time.

Another indicator of distance passed by and it seemed to be manually updated with a new number, and I had no clue whether it was correct or not.

I kept going and going, focusing on the beautiful scenery; ignoring the complaints from my feet and hips.

I've been always curious what these yellow flower crops are, which are seen at so many places along these routes.

A cross marker established in 2002 in memory of someone's relatives was at the start of the village which was my destination for the day, El Burgo Ranero.

I was very tired and was glad to find the Albergue for the night named La Laguna, which also turned out to be completely unoccupied, besides me.

I was pretty hungry and after a few minutes' rest, found a restaurant named Piedra Blanco. I asked for dinner, but the service only began at 7:30 PM and was allowed to have a beer instead.

After an hour of waiting, I was invited into the dining room and in the three course menu, the first course had a salad and paella. An 80 year old Italian grandfather from Bologna wanted the paella and so did I.

The waitress asked me to share the table with the grandpa and that led to an interesting conversation with him despite him not being able to speak any English. On another table, there was a retired lawyer from Chicago who joined our conversation. He was doing this Camino as he suddenly decided that it was a thing to do. About 20 years ago, he had similarly decided to walk up to the base camp of Mount Everest.

After the meal, I walked back to the Albergue and was soon fast asleep going to the tiredness.