Day 24 - Villar de Mazarife to Santibanez - 20 km
Another nice day. Sun shining, temperatures heating up. It was nice to be done walking by noon. Tomorrow will be tougher but for today we just enjoyed.
We started walking by 7:00, stopped for coffee about 10 km in at a little town, at the albergue/restaurant/bar. Looked like a great place. It is amazing how nice the albergues are in the small towns. They seem to take pride in keeping them clean and providing a nice experience.
Most of our walk today was through fields. And lots of farmers out working today. It is interesting that there are lots of fields but not any (or at least not many) farm buildings. The odd machine shed made of bricks, and an occasional dairy barn. It seems that the farmers live in the towns, as we saw lots of tractors parked in town. Anyway, seeing the John Deere’s and the cows and the fields remind me of my Dad. He would like this countryside.
In Hospital de Orbigo (a town, not a hospital) there was a huge long bridge across a river and then some. Apparently they used to joust there in the 15th century. One knight defeated 300 opponents! Then he made a pilgrimage to Santiago.
Our destination today, Santibanez de Valdeiglesias, has a great albergue, the Camino Frances. The restaurant is fabulous. I just had the best hamburger I’ve had in a long while. First one in Spain. And a big mug of cerveza limon. It is SO Tasty.
We are getting closer to more mountains today. For a while it felt like walking west of Calgary, seeing the mountains get closer, and knowing that in a couple of days we have to walk over them. Yikes!
This afternoon was very quiet. We had a short walk, nothing to see. Then lay down to rest while we digested our beef.
It will be another quiet night. That’s okay. Rachel has some shows downloaded from Netflix so we snuggle on a single bed and watch “TV” on her iPad.
Todays lesson: sometimes the smallest towns have nicest albergues
Cafe con leche and snack 4€
burger and cerveza limon 9€
another cerveza 2€
dunner 9€
