Morning in Calzadilla

(Calzadilla de la Cueza to Sahagun: 22.5 km, 6 3/4 hours with 1.7 hours breaks; 32,179 steps, plus 5260 later)

Luke 10:1-12
v. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

Jesus had a mission for his disciples and instructions for how to go about it. Two things he said were: Travel light. Don’t get distracted by other offers along the way. These are good rules for us too. Everything you put in your pack weighs something and you have to carry it. Are you sure you need it? Even now we have a few more things we might send to Chris. And the artistic treasures along the way are a distraction to me. If we just stayed until this opens again, if we walked another kilometer or two over that way…. Maurice wisely tells me that if we look at everything we will never get to Santiago. Maybe that’s one reason Jesus sent his disciples two by two (v. 1): When one was tempted to go off track, the other could bring him back. This is wisdom for the rest of life too. Lord, show us what it means to travel light in life. Keep us from distractions that would compromise our mission.

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We were up by six, ate the tiny breakfast we had bought at a grocery store and left town by eight, last except for the South Korean men, one of whose poles were missing. I was back to wearing my old left shoe again; it’s a little tighter on the toes but the heel seems to be a better fit. The shoes are so dusty it is not immediately apparent they don’t match. The German guy from last night who didn’t approve of pack transport was just ahead of us; he had stayed in a private room above the restaurant. Pack transport, private room–we all have our own rules (and we’ll take some of each from time to time). It was 46 degrees but we were cozy in our gloves and new fleece pullovers. My knees were cold, though, taking me back to junior high days of miniskirts and knee-highs when we worried that extra insulation would develop around our exposed joints and we would have fat knees. We were on a nice path through a little gap; the surrounding horizon of purple, pink and yellow faded by the minute.

In tiny Ledigos we stopped in the one bar. They had no tortilla so we had tostada with Maurice’s cafe con leche. We were a good five minutes down the road when we realized neither one of us had paid. I wandered ahead and leaned against a rock watching sparrows in a bush while Maurice dashed back to rectify the situation; the bartenders had changed shifts, hadn’t noticed and had a hard time figuring out what Maurice wanted.

The way bypassed the churches in all four little towns we passed through and Maurice was not eager to detour so we missed whatever treasures they possessed (if they were even open). We turned right at the dovecote, passed manure piles in the sun, walked by dead sunflowers. In the distance there were windmills, always windmills.

Bodegas in a field (though it’s hard to get the scale here)

About eleven we entered the bodega village of Moratinos. A bodega is a cellar dug in the earth with the excavated dirt piled up to make a hill over it (the castillo); an information sign told us digging the bodega was often a winter activity for medieval children–it gave them something to do and kept them warm. The underground spaces were originally used for winemaking and various agricultural activities. People today use them as wine cellars or even party rooms. A bodega is accessed by a staircase behind a door in a hillside; think hobbit house and you’ll have the picture. In Moratinos we followed the signs to El Castillo, where the dining room behind the bar was a renovation of the family’s bodega. When the owner turned on the light for me to look, I asked him how old it was. “Three or four hundred years,” he said. “Who knows?” We had been lured in by the signs for bacon and eggs so we ordered them for a third breakfast, or first lunch–let’s call it brunch. The fried eggs were fresh and hot; mine were accompanied with some cut of ham masquerading as bacon, and Maurice’s with chorizo and French fries, plus bread and olive oil and cokes. It was an hour’s stop and worth every minute.

We pressed on through little adobe towns, our small group of pilgrims who had left from Calzadilla crisscrossing paths with one another throughout the day. No one else caught up with us because all previous albergues were at least 17.2 kilometers behind where we started. A medieval bridge led to a little mudejar hermitage church, locked tight; a perfect view of it was eclipsed by trees. A nearby monument proclaimed this spot the center of the Camino, but we weren’t convinced because we had earlier passed the 400-kilometer mark.

12th-century Ermita Virgen del Puente

We arrived tired about 2:00 in the ancient town of Sahagun and had to trudge to its opposite end for the Hospaderia Santa Cruz of the Madras Benedictinas. This was our third accommodation in a monastery. The nuns do not personally take care of you; short cranky old women tend to the pilgrims, and they are not happy to see you. The monastery’s price was higher than the website but we were soon signed in for another clean and renovated double room with a spacious bathroom; a sign instructed us to “deposit the sheet in the soil and gather the blankets doubled in the cupboard” (Google Translate at work?). There was terrible wifi. I couldn’t even send an email though Maurice managed to connect. French-Canadian Tom was still in our lives, but in the next room rather than the next bunk.

We needed cash so we plodded back up the hill into town, looking for the elusive cajero automatica, but first stumbling into a pastry shop for a coke and chocolate croissants. Maurice got the cash and I chatted with a fellow pilgrim until a nearby grocery store reopened at four.

We went around to the church for evening prayer with the nuns in their overgilded chapel. It was a sung service with organ but nothing was provided for the pilgrims to sing along. Afterward all the pilgrims were invited into the chancel where we stated our home countries, were prayed for and received as a gift a card containing our pilgrim prayer in Spanish. The nuns were smiling and sweet and would have chatted afterward–if only I could say anything coherent in their language.

It was dinner time in the comedor. We started with a big plate of macaroni lightly brushed with a reddish sauce, then received a small piece of fried ham, French fries and potato croquettes, with bread. Dessert was a cup of store-brand yogurt. Even the vino tinto, a Tempranillo, was bad. Nelli, the young German sitting next to me (who works daily on carving her own hiking stick), and I agreed it was the worst pilgrim meal ever.

I retrieved the laundry from the courtyard in the dark (a perilous undertaking). When I got back to the room I looked out the window and saw a glowing steeple so I dashed outside to investigate (quickly, before I got locked out). A gorgeous mudejar church crammed between alleys a block away was illuminated in the night.