(Granon to Belorado: 15.7 km, 4 1/4 hours; about 22,950 steps plus 3500 later)

Matthew 2
v. 10b The star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.

This passage has a lot of traveling in it–Joseph in obedience to the Lord, the Magi seeking the King, Herod’s men following orders. At some point, though, everybody halted. The Magi stopped in obedience to the star they were following when it rested over the place where Jesus was. We stopped early today in the quiet little town of Belorado. A church was open and a bench outside beckoned from the shade. Though my heel is much better, my other leg hurts and we had decided not to go far. A sign at the parroquial albergue door just down from the church said it opened at two. It was noon. We pondered what we might do and ended up wandering over to the main square and doing nothing much at all for the next two hours until we could check into the albergue. The bench, the shade, the quiet, the closed door–it was like the star that said just stop here and rest. Lord, may we have ears to hear you and a heart to obey when you tell us to stop moving and just be still.

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We actually slept on the mats last night in San Juan Bautista, at least as well as any other albergue night. We gave goodbye hugs all around, as the sign instructed us to do, and left at 7:45, both of us with our own packs again. My heel was much better, now eclipsed by the pain in my right lower leg. The wide rolling landscape was brown under gray skies.

At nine we stopped at a bar outside the church in Redecilla del Camino for chocolate croissants, juice and coffee. A sign extolled the virtues of the medieval baptismal font but of course the church was not open to view it. The rows of grapes were gone, replaced by swaths of dead sunflowers. We passed through Viloria where the beloved Santo Domingo was born; inexplicably his house was mostly torn down some years ago and sits near the church in a ruined heap.

The sun came out and our path paralleled a major highway. The packs seemed heavy, and we had miscellaneous foot and leg pains. Maurice put on some walking music, hard to hear with all the trucks whizzing by; serendipitously, whenever someone passed us we had classical music playing, so we seemed much more genteel than we really are.

We had decided on a shorter walk today and reached Belorado about noon. The albergue parroquial donativo wasn’t open yet so we putzed around the nearby square for an hour–a lovely square, round really, with trees and benches in the middle and kids with soccer balls and skateboards. We basically did absolutely nothing but sit at a bar that had loos and wifi. Should we walk farther or should we stay? We ran into the French pilgrims, who had had lunch and were heading out.

Finally we wandered back to the church and checked in to the albergue, run by a Swiss Camino confederation. We were welcomed by Jacques and Gerard, the volunteer Swiss hospitaleros, with tea and cookies in the main hall downstairs. There were long tables for pilgrim meals, two bathrooms, the requisite rack for boots, drying racks for laundry, educational signs about bedbugs in five languages and steps up to the kitchen platform at the far end. Our room upstairs had eight bunks; four more were in the large hallway at the top of the stairs. After lunch, shower, rest and groceries, we stopped in a farmacia to get what I hope is a Ben-Gay-like cream for my leg, then sat in the square using the cafe wifi to try to post to my blog. We had a pilgrim dinner at a restaurant on the square–kind of standard, but with an especially fine salad and ham croquettes for me–and I continued with my blog attempts; very few pictures have made it out. Back at the parroquial we settled down for the night, five ladies and Maurice in our eight-bed room. Soon all was quiet except for light snoring from one of the Bulgarians.