Day 36: Dia 10 del Camino — partying, pools and peregrino meals.
Bring it!
O. M. G. We really should take a rest day and party with the Spanish.
The music stopped at 10:30 last night, and I’m like, what?? Kinda stoked through, I got up and opened the window and our balcony door to let a little fresh air in and hopped back in bed. To be startled by a starter’s gun about 10 minutes later — a horde of kids went racing down our street, starting from right outside our window. And then at 11, the disco kicked off again. So out of bed I jumped (or, more accurately, hobbled) to shut the window and door, and find the ear plugs we got from the Paris overnight train. While they helped quieten the noise, they provided no defense against the vibrations of the bass 🙃.
Fortunately, we were all pretty tired so slept surprisingly well. Which was lucky, as the fiesta finished around 4:30. And then the first peregrino got up and turned on the corridor light at 5:30. Buenos días a todos! (Good morning everyone!).
It was a good morning, to be honest, and we followed the Camino out of town and back into a sea of sunflowers.
This morning’s walk took us across the municipal boundary from Rioja to Castillo y Leon.
It’s sunny, hot and dry here too 🌞.
Some other peregrinos were stopping to take pics, which gave us the rare opportunity of a family photo 🙂.
Everything was closed in the first village we passed, so we headed to Castiledegardo to try and find some breakfast.
As you can probably guess, given our track record to date, nothing was open there either. Other than this very lovely church where we were given a candle to light, a set of rosary beads, a prayer card, and even a blessing from the Priest.
So we continued on the trail…
The next village had a fountain, a church (of course) and some great statues of Santo Domingo. While Vilaria de Rioja had celebrated it’s 1,000th birthday in 2019, in 2023 hungry pilgrims could buy nothing to eat.
They did provide picnic benches though, so we scrounged the last of our scroggin, muesli bars, and even some emergency lollies and had a make shift brekky in tbe shade.
And then it was another few km to Villamajor del Rio. The Wise Pilgrim app warned us not to get too excited about this village, as it didn’t live up to it’s rather grand name. But it had an open food shop, and that was all we needed 🙂.
We only had five more kilometers to Belorado, and as our alberge had a pool, we upped our pace and got there just before opening time. Luckily Seamus had made a reservation, as there were quite a few peregrinos with the same idea.
And no wonder — tbe garden and pool were awesome!
After a bit of a drama re not having a confirmed booking for the following evening, and looking at alternative plans to get us to Burgos (where we had a reservation in two nights time), a very timely email arrived and Seamus promptly booked some beds in Agés.
And it’s gonna take us ages to get there. Well, at least seven hours we reckon. It’s 27km — our longest trek yet — and we’re expecting a high of 35 tomorrow. Plus a mighty steep hill.
So we did some protein loading.
And had some liquid refreshments.
I wasn’t going to drink tonight, but vino came as part of the peregrinos meal. And the bottle was too damn cute to refuse…
But now it’s lights out as we go sleepy bye byes, and prepare for our big day tomorrow.
Hasta mañana!