Farming the Meseta

Camino. Chapter 21.

Camino de Santiago - Day 19: Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos to Mansilla de las Mulas

This is my serialized story of walking five hundred miles with my sister-in-law across Northern Spain on the historic Camino de Santiago. If you’d like to start at the beginning of our journey, click here.

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Hey everyone, here is my latest chapter of hiking the Camino de Santiago. In the previous chapter Marlene, my sister-in-law, and I had just passed the halfway point of our adventure. This chapter focuses on one of our final days on the Meseta, a high plains, one-hundred-and-fifty-mile stretch of hot, shadeless, farmland roughly between the cities of Burgos and Leon. Dear readers, my delay in telling this tale has been due to writing about hiking the one-thousand, one-hundred and seventy-five-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail in North Carolina. Returning to the Camino to complete this story brings back daily reminders of the stress of hiking fifteen to twenty miles a day and the physical impact of maintaining this pace on our bodies.

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Camino de Santiago - Day 19: Calzadilla de Los Hermanillos to Mansilla de las Mulas

The road out of the remote farm town of Calzadilla heads west and surprisingly is paved. It startled us but is a welcomed reprieve from the previous rock-filled, abuse-of-a-road yesterday afternoon. Still, with 17 km (10 1/2 miles) to walk before we reached the next town, we have learned to be prepared for whatever road surface we happen upon. Getting tougher doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that my plantar facsiitis has gone away.

As we walk, we can see behind us that out on the Meseta the rains have opened up. Yet, we are dry. We take it as a good sign when the sun peeps through the curtain of rain clouds off in the distance.

After three miles, at a intersection with the northern route to Villamurfio, the pavement on our road continuing west ends abruptly, and the true test of another day of rocks, sharp stones, and loose gravel begins.

Once again, we are forced to chose our steps and rely on our hiking poles to tread lightly as we travel on to Reliegos, the town where we will meet back up with the Camino’s main route. The guidebook says the road we are on is an excellent example of an ancient Roman highway, but we can’t help but see many of the paving stones the Romans put firmly into place nearly 15 centuries ago, have been pulled away from their original placement by large tractors, heavy wagons, and other modern equipment. In farm country on the Meseta there is no mercy for antiquity.

Still, even with black flies picking up as the morning progresses and the heat rises from the fields, we realize we are walking across a beautiful landscape of farmland and feel, finally, like this is the point of taking the alternative route. Solemnly, perhaps, Marlene and I soak in the beauty of where we are, and, in turn, agree that we are satisfied with our decision.

When we finally reach Reliegos, we discover nothing is open. Reliegos is a town that, like others we encountered on our pilgrimage, appears to be dead. Still, we stop at a shaded spot in the town, and, after more than ten miles, eat a late lunch (consisting of bananas and power bars from our back packs).

It’s nice being back on the main route of the Camino, walking in the spread-out company of other pilgrims. Our goal is to push on to Mansilla de las Mulas, five miles away, where we have reservations in a hostel. By mid-afternoon we arrive and are sharing a small dormitory room with six other people we have never met before. Still having our choice of bunkbeds before the last arrivals is nice.

We contact friends in our “bubble” who have also reached Mansilla and get together for dinner that night. Seeing our friends from lunch the other day, all of whom chose to walk the main route, reinforces how nice it is being part of a community of pilgrims. Our friends are from Belgium, Germany, Italy, and England. Yesterday, we met fellow pilgrims from the United States (Seattle, Texas, and Tennessee) and hope to see them once more before this trip is completed.

In a town where often all the beds are taken by evening, two of our friends parodied the monument of homeless pilgrims in the main square. For those without a bed, the next town is five miles away. Not a good situation for anyone.

It has been a tough “slog” crossing the Meseta and tomorrow we leave Mansilla for Leon, our third major city across Northern Spain. In Leon Marlene and I plan is to take a rest or “zero” day from our pilgrimage. Our Camino adventure is coming to an end and it is time to regroup and prepare for the last long stretch of our journey.