The Big Walk

A room of our own, Day 25

Some of the other pilgrims in the hostel set a new record by getting up at four o’clock, whilst we depart at the lazy hour of a quarter to six. The cycle track leading to Fromista is flanked by several villages with fortress-like churches. There’s a good reason for us to keep moving as the track is swarming with ants, proceeding across our path in endless narrow lines, the miniature motorways of their own busy world. At Fromista I stock up on food at a shop where a group of four American pilgrims are having a heated row amongst themselves about how much each has spent and whether Jim is allowed to have another yoghurt, or whether he will have to starve for the next few days. The shopkeeper patiently waits in silence.

There’s a graceful Romanesque church here, one of the oldest on the route. There two circular towers at the nave end and an octagonal one at the crossover, whilst all around the eves are a series of carved corbels and metopes with fabulous details. Peering up, we can see all kinds of animals and grotesque, sometimes comic beasts. The gentle curves of the apse and elegant but plain interior make a delightfully simple whole that puts the overpowering, cluttered richness of later architectural styles to shame.

We follow the Castille Canal towpath for a few miles. Started in 1753 to link Segovia with Santander, it took almost a hundred years to build, but just another hundred later it was obsolete. It’s sad to see it full of reeds, a stairway of locks having become a waterfall. At Boadilla there’s a fine rollo – the medieval Spanish equivalent of a market cross, and a tiny, unstaffed refugio in another old school (where do all the kids go now who live near the camino?). We’re the only guests, so we enjoy having our own house for the evening. There’s a farm in the village serving delicious meals; beans, thick lamb stew and wine served in earthenware cups, so it seems that the barman way back in Santiago wasn’t taking the mickey after all.