The Big Walk

Breaking Bread together – Day 26

A miracle has occurred – there are clouds in the sky! The next village of Itero de la Vega has tudor style black and white houses, which makes it seem ancient, since to British eyes these are about the oldest homes we have. Happily, the plains are behind us at last, and we begin to climb a steep chalk escarpment, pausing to look back at the wonderful retrospective of the checkerboard of wheat fields below. What a relief that there’s something to look at that isn’t a church. We’ve reached the meseta, a region of high, sweeping plateaux. There’s a broad, winding valley ahead, and as the sky blackens further, we hasten our pace, especially when forked lightening begins to crackle over to our right. Minutes later, we are being bombarded with hailstones the size of small pebbles and have to madly scramble through our bags to dig out coats that have been buried deeper and deeper with each scorching day. By the time we reach a bar in Castrojeriz, we’re soaked from the waist down and our boots are squelching with every step. Five or six waves of the most fantastic rain pass over for the next couple of hours before the storm seems finally spent and we dare to venture back outside. Castrojeriz is an ancient town built on the side of a detached chunk of the meseta, topped by a castle, and the residents are attempting to celebrate the start of a fiesta. A band braves the rain whilst the locals in their finery skulk under the arcades of the central streets.

The baking sunshine returns to begin the slow drying of our boots as we pass the ruins of the Hostal San Anton. Monks here could reputedly cure St Antonin’s fire (a type of gangrene prevalent in the eleventh century) by touching pilgrims with a tau-shaped cross. The once-fine carvings on the weathered remains are a sad contrast to the state of the camino’s churches. Niches are still visible in the walls beside the way, where bread was once put out for pilgrims passing by. Our destination for the day is Hontonas, steeply enclosed in a narrow valley. The vast, stone built houses, with timbered upper floors, put the road in permanent shadow, and the only sign of modernity being a tempting swimming pool. To our dismay, it’s closed – ‘too early in the year,’ apparently, so god only knows how hot it must be in another month or so.

The pilgrim hostel is a particularly fine old house with an enormous stone arch over the doorway. It provides evening meals, and we eat at a huge wooden table with the other pilgrims, French, Dutch, German, Swiss, a Flemish Belgian, and ourselves. The wine smoothes over the communication difficulties as the conversation is carried out in a mixture of French, Spanish and English, the Dutch lady being fluent in all three. Even the Flemish guy joins in with hand signs, though he understands not a word from anyone. It was a good experience to break bread together in such a group, for once crossing the barriers that normally keep all the pilgrims apart. At the end of the night, we find the establishment’s disadvantage – the home-made bunk beds are ridiculously high, fully seven feet off the ground. There are no railings to hold you in, and I try to sleep whilst gripping the sides of the mattress. The Swiss lady across the room seems to have no problems with the height, so our fears don’t augur well for the Pyrenees.