The hotel we stayed at in Fromista, the Dona Mayor, was off the Camino but easy enough to find. We were the first to check in, and had the option of picking our room from a photo album. We choose a room that had morning sun to hopefully be cooler in the hottest part of the day, and we were gone before the morning sun rose. It had a funky 1960s colour scheme, green walls with what were almost music staffs and black circles, mushroom lights and 60s plastic bucket chairs. A very charming room, with air conditioning. The balcony was built with the idea that if a board can span 2 metres, let's go for three. Very spongy. But it provided a good location for a clothes line to hang laundry.
Actually we have been very lucky about getting balconies. If any, and sometimes it is only one, room has a balcony, we get it.
The dinner was the classiest we have had so far. Lots of vegetables. We had a nice chat with a French perigrino, he in broken English, us in quasi-French. He had walked from Bordeaux, and came to dinner in his bedroom slippers.
Two very young sisters were managing the hotel. We never saw anyone else hovering in the background.
Breakfast was great, with freshly squeezed orange juice. As in Najera, she had this machine that takes oranges in the top and produces juice out the bottom.
It seems that there may only have been three or four rooms rented. The recession may still be having a effect. This hotel would have been very much more expensive than the lodging at the multitudinous alberques in town.
Breakfast was early so we were on the trail by 7:30. A walk around the 11th century Iglesia de San Martin with it's 300 external corbels, each carved with a different human, animal or mystical motif. We can't attest to the number, but there were a lot and each one was different. A lot of stone masons spent a lot of time producing these objects. This church is one of the finest examples of pure Romanesque in Spain and Fromista is famous for it.
The trip out of the town was a surprise as it did not include a climb. The temperature was quite pleasant for t-shirt and shorts even that early, but the forecast called for heat, and the sky had that going to rain later look.
The one thing we are really noticing is that there are a lot more perigrinos on the Way than we had seen previously. As we get closer to Santiago, we expect more perigrinos will join the walk.
At Poblacion de Campos, there was an option to carry on along the highway or veer right and follow the rio Ucieza. We chose the latter (the old Roman road) which was slightly longer but we were met with water on the right and trees, providing welcome shade for most of that section of the Way. Off in the distance you could see other perigrinos slogging along beside the highway in the full sun.
We walked along kilometres of precast concrete aquaducts. These carried water, by gravity, from uphill to where the farmer needed water to irrigate his field. If they had to pass a road, there would be cistern on each side of the road, with a connecting underground pipe. These have, in large part, fallen into disuse as the farmers now irrigate their crops with sprinklers rather than opening and closing earthen dikes to control the flow into trenches. It is very obvious to us that where there is water, there are happy plants, where not, they are struggling.
This section of the Camino really is somewhat monotonous, freeing up the mind for contemplation. Lynn got thinking of how a lot of people walk the camino to find themselves, and how most people like to disguise themselves in one manner or another to others. For example, the fellow we met on the train who is dressed up like a Jesuit priest and is even wearing a collar. This is an extreme example and he has crossed the line from merely wearing a mask, metaphorically speaking, to actually attempting to deceive others into thinking he is something he isn't. If we really want to find ourselves, not only do we need to dispense with the mask we wear in front of others, but the mask we hide behind ourselves.
The wanna be priest also provided another important lesson. Is religion going to continue to have relevance in our age of scientific knowledge? If it is, being a man of the cloth certainly doesn't entail performing dramas where you serve yourself mass (note-at least he didn't cross the line and serve mass to anyone other than his compatriot) and waste the time of a lot of bystanders too polite to walk away. Rather, it involves a life of servitude to God or others, being the hands and feet of Christ in the world. This brings us to the issue of focussing inward versus outward. There has to be a balance. He has gone too far on focussing inward. Perhaps many others have gone too far focussing outward?
And then we walked for 6km along the highway in the glaring heat. The town seems just down the road but takes forever to get there. Lynn found that stretch of the walk pretty boring, Russ just sucks it up and walks. Both are realizing that in this heat, the first cafe con leche stop should also including picking up a Gatorade type drink. You sweat so much and drink a lot of water, so you lose a lot of salts.
Today we got to our destination well before siesta time, and lo and behold, there were people, lots of people, out shopping. It's like something from a sci-fi movie, the residents close up their shop windows, close there shutters, and hide from the aliens in the afternoon.
Our room wasn't ready so we wandered around town, finished the lunch we bought yesterday, and bought some supplies. When we came back our suitcase wasn't here yet, so there was nothing to do but sleep until 3pm when registration opens. Going down at 3pm sharp, we noticed the couple from Colorado are staying the night here. They stayed 3 nights in Burgos and then rented bikes to make up for the time by biking, rather than walking, for the next three days.
The lightning and thunder started at 3:50, as per the forecast, and for the next 40 minutes it poured. I would have hated to have been walking in it. Your options would have been, get wet or get wet.
Summary - a cooler day than yesterday but still too hot as the day wore on. The scenery was much the same, farms and farms. More perigrinos on the road as we carry on.
Distance today - 20 km
Distance total - 382.5km
What good timing on avoiding the thunder and lightening; your early start paid off. Enjoyed reading about what you were contemplating on the boring section. Is that the same Jesuit priest with whom you had your picture taken? With thoughts like that it sounds like you have lots to share with the Thursday morning group at Emmanuel.
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