We leave Castrojeriz along a street bordered by lovely roses.
We walk along a marshy area before crossing the Rio Odrilla. According to our guidebook (Dintaman & Landes, 2017) thousands of tons of stone were dumped into this marsh to create a Roman causeway to transport gold and other minerals.Just after the river, the trail turns steep as we climb up to Alto de Mostelares. The photo below is Jeff at the top (after we recovered!) looking over the path down to Castrillo de Cabezon. This portion of the path down is paved as parts are up to 18% grade.
Near the bottom of the hill we can see these wind generators near Castrillo de cabezon.
Just outside Itero de la Vega we are welcomed to the Provincia de Palencia. According to the Codex Calixtinus complied from 1138-1145, under the direction of Pope Callixtus II, the territory is "full of royal treasure, of gold and silver, fabics and the strongest horses, and flush with bread, wine, fish, milk and honey. It is however lacking in firewood and the people are evil and vicious," (p. 3197/7125). How bad can they be if they have flower boxes outside their windows all through town and provide sustance for the weary pilgrims below who've stopped for nourishment?
We walked for about 2 miles along a broad irrigation canal, the Canal de Castilla, built from 1753-1859 (Dintaman & Landes, 2017). Originally, mules towed ships up and down the canal. Today it feeds several fields of wheat, potatoes and sugar beets, and comes to a dam structure just outside Fromista.
Look at that blue sky! We enjoy a beautiful and very brief break from the storm clouds as we walk through the town of Fromista to our hotel.
This is what it looked like as we ducked into the hotel literally five minutes before the heavens opened over the Iglesia de San Martin.
We left Fromista under clouds, but the weather is predicted to be partially sunny today! As we near the town of Poblacion de Campos we cross a bridge lined with these Camino markers. The river below is filled with frogs calling their mates at the top of their little froggy lungs!
We walked past this metal statue of a pilgrim and adjacent Templar Cross that the homeowners placed in an orchard that abuts the Camino trail. A nice bench was also provided under a shade tree nearby. How nice many people are to weary pilgrims!
An intersting pilgrimage mural and Camino signs as we approach Ravenga de Campos.
Even Coca Cola is into the pilgrimage! Only 419 km to go...a Coke Zero sounds good about now! We stopped for lunch at the cafe below in Villalcazar de Sirga. I really need to take some pics of our amazing food. One plate you see is a jamon and queso bocadillo (ham and cheese sandwich). The other plate as something new for us. It's the normal tortilla (eggs baked with potato slices, onion and peppers) sliced in half and stuffed with lettuce, tomatoes and a light dressing. Sounds kind of weird but it was delicioso!
A handsome pilgrim waiting for his lunch in Villalcazar de Sirga. He's looking around the cafe for the Knights Templar who were the original protectors of Villalcazar.
After our yummy lunch (no Knights Templar showed up. Like most in Spain, they probably eat later in the day.), we headed across more wheat fields to Carrion de los Condes our destination for today.
According to Dintaman and Landes (2017) in the Middle Ages Carrion de los Condes was a wealthy town of 10,000 with 14 pilgrim hospitals. Legend holds that Charlemagne camped here during his campaign against the Moors who had the audacity to build a castle here in the 8th Century. This intresting mural below welcomes us to Carrion de los Condes and we cross the river Carrion below the church.
Our hotel is here in the rennovated Montasterio de San Zoilo. Tomorrow we hit the halfway mark in our pilgrimage. I can't believe it! Seems too soon.
