(Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz:  20.1 km, 6 hours including 1  1/2 hours in breaks; about 28,500 steps, plus more later)

Matthew 13:1-23
v. 4-8a As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop.

As I walk through the meseta this parable is easy to imagine. The path is hard, dry and dusty and won’t receive any seed. I think birds are kept away by multitudes of pilgrim feet, but we’ve seen some flittering among the brush lining the road and eating seeds from the dead sunflowers. And rocky places? Yesterday from a distance we saw white fields ahead. Had they been sprayed with something? When we got up next to the fields, we saw they had been tilled but the entire surface was covered with white rocks–a crop of rocks! I don’t know how anything at all could grow there. Thorns and weeds line the paths, a thick tangle that keeps anything else from growing. But in other fields that roll toward the horizon are fine crops of wheat and barley. All this soil is like people’s hearts, receiving the Word to different degrees, but the Lord is so bountiful with his word that he scatters it everywhere, all the time. He gives people one chance after another to cultivate the soil of their hearts and receive the good seed, promising a life abundantly richer in eternity than the best we have now.

Field of rocks

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Our rest in Burgos was refreshing; I hardly notice my heel now and my leg barely hurts at all. We headed out of Hornillos today at 8:15 to dusty roads and a gentle climb. The flies slept until ten but we had them fooled–we sprayed on some DEET-rich bug repellent. At 10:15 we stopped at the first bar in Hontanas, population 70, for orange juice, coke, tortilla and a nice loo. I don’t expect roadside bars in towns with no sidewalks to have suitable restrooms but I have been surprised; though usually just one-seaters, most have been reasonably clean and every one (with one exception in a tiny tienda) has had soap. I am guessing that a Spanish law requires soap in public bathrooms. There may not be a toilet seat, or toilet paper, or paper towels, but there is always soap.

Hontanas

We continued past wild growth and dead sunflowers along the dusty path. Suddenly Maurice lunged forward, choking. Oh no. In the next millisecond I imagined he was dying on the spot, another pilgrim biting the dust on the Camino, requiring a monument along the way, in a forlorn spot, soon decorated with ribbons and rocks and notes. But no! He was just gagging on a fly that had flown straight down his throat.

The Camino merged with a road, a long tree-lined road seeming to go on forever, yet around a bend the road ran right through the remains of San Anton monastery, its gothic arches a romantic ruin.

We walked around to where the albergue is located and sat on a bench by the wall of the roofless front apse to eat our pseudo-lunch of orange and cookies. It was a lovely stop. Where the road went under a remaining arch are two windows where medieval monks used to leave bread for passing pilgrims. A little outdoor tienda just outside the ruin provided coke and a WC. I complimented the owner on his delightful music wafting through the ruins and he proudly told me he put together the playlist himself.

Castrojeriz is not only a big pilgrim stop but also a vacation destination, meaning rooms can be scarce. I had worked hard with poor internet yesterday to locate a hostel and we wandered almost to the end of the long town before we found it, the Albergue Rosalia. Rosa welcomed us with offerings of cool water and watermelon chunks before leading us up to the attic where single beds (no bunks!) were arrayed under a sloping roof of huge beams, dark, smooth and warped with age, in wildly asymmetrical construction put up hundreds of years ago. We had to watch our heads when moving around, and watch our step on the tiled steep, uneven and turning staircase that only had a railing along part of it–in fact, the whole place was dangerous with rooms oddly interconnected by a slope or a step or half a dozen steps. One ancient door opened to a patio for drying laundry; another went to the “honest kitchen,” a spacious room containing a big table and approximations of kitchen facilities with a supply of coffee, tea, bread, eggs, vegetables, apples, cookies and other basics available for pilgrims to use in exchange for a donation into a metal box.

The honest kitchen

The albergue was crowded but people shared the facilities, although I didn’t really need to see a big guy leaving the men’s shower room clad only in his gray undies. The kitchen was always friendly. While I napped Maurice sipped wine, told stories and boiled some eggs for us to take along the next day. After dinner down the street on the terrace of the Hotel Jacobus, where the waiter was pleasant and the food was good, we snuggled in under the rafters. Apparently the snoring from Undies-Man kept two of the young women awake, causing them to drag their sleeping bags to a far corner of the attic, but I didn’t hear a thing.

In the attic, my bed with the flowered sheet and my scarf wrapped around the pillow

Castrojeriz