View of Leon as we came down from the hills

(Reliegos to Leon: 24.3 km, 7 hours [not counting festivities] with 1 hr & 40 min breaks; 33,786 steps, plus 1500 later)

Luke 24:13-33

v. 15-16 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.

Does Jesus walk along with us? I hoped he would. I ask him to. Sometimes I imagine him right next to me but when I look I only see the blue sky. Lord Jesus, open our eyes so we might see you better, in whatever way you appear to us.

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No breakfast was available, as the bar that ran the albergue didn’t open this early. A sign on our door warned against eating in the room (as well as informed us we needed to practice good hygiene) so we took our juice boxes, yogurt and bananas out into the dark morning chill of the patio. A bowl of figs sat on the table for hungry pilgrims, so I rinsed some off and packed them for later.

We were out at 7:45, walking a straight tree-lined path through the fields. A half hour later I reached for the guidebook and it wasn’t in my waist pouch where it belongs. Oh, no, stop the train! How could we have left it behind? I thought about the last time I had seen it, which was in bed the night before…when it seemed like too much trouble to put away and I slipped it into the case with the ipad…I thought. We dug through Maurice’s pack and into the ipad case and there it was. Catastrophe averted. “I’m rubbing off on you too much,” Maurice said. It is the kind of thing he does regularly.

I checked the book about the walk into Leon, which I should have done the night before. The guidebook suggested taking the bus in, avoiding the slog through the industrial area. We could have hopped on the bus in the next town and done just that, except that we had sent our packs ahead. “You could still do it,” suggested Regular Canadian Tom, whom we met up with in the bar in Mansilla de las Mulas where we were enjoying bacon and eggs. “Not according to my rules,” I replied. Two overlapping frivolous expenses, bus and pack transport? Nope.

We walked through cornfields and bedraggled towns. Behind a Galp gas station rose a hill where the ancient Asturians made their final stand against the Romans. In the otherwise suburban town of Villarente one medieval building remained that had once been a pilgrim hospital with donkey ambulance service to Leon. We paused at a descanso outside Arcahueja for a picnic lunch; the pavilion was put up by the town in 2005 with tables and benches, a fuente, a large trough (for your horses?) and an engraving of the remaining distance to Santiago: 307 kilometers.

At the top of a final hill we left a donation for a can of soft drink plucked from a cooler anonymously supplied for thirsty pilgrims.

Down the hill we walked into Leon at 1:45. It hadn’t been a bad walk at all–certainly no bus was needed–but at 2:45 we were still walking. As we neared the center of town the crowds increased. Whole families were strolling, dressed a tad bit better than we were. There were a few people clad in traditional dress and a man with a big banner. And music! Without a word we turned from our appointed path and followed the music. In back of a church, folk dancers on a stage were hopping and twirling to amplified music of reeds and drums. The entire square was packed with groups of people in costume, people with banners or instruments, lines of decorated donkey carts, spectators, and the guardia civil keeping things in order–and we walked right smack through the middle of it all. I kept looking around to see where to go to get out of the way but there was no out of the way. So we stood with our day packs and hiking poles like the country cousins come to the big city and slowly moved around surveying the scene, a chaos of color and sound under the bright sun.

But we couldn’t stay long because we were exhausted. Our hotel was just another square or two farther, but the hotel door was locked. A sign said someone was awaiting us in the “cafeteria.” We assumed that meant the restaurant / bar in the corner of the lovely square, but the place was hopping, and with servers running and bartenders beholden to multitudes of customers, it took fifteen minutes to find someone to check us in. The Hotel Boccalino was OK but it got off to a rough start with us. The shower head didn’t stay up (Maurice fixed it with a rubber band, then put up the clothesline while he was at it). Do we get breakfast? Who knows? Is there a grocery store nearby? Ditto. In all the confusion we didn’t get a wifi code and there was no one around to ask.

We went back outside to our pretty little plaza after seven. San Isidoro opposite the hotel was holding a pilgrim mass at 7:30. It was all in Spanish, of course, but pilgrims were called to the front afterward, receiving a card with the pilgrim prayer in their preferred language and a blessing, but first we were all given words to sing along to a pilgrim hymn. A young woman translated into English for the old priest, who loved us all and hoped we would make San Isidoro our home while we were in town. Then we were all invited to the sacristy to recceive the parish stamp in our credencial.

We went right over to the Boccalino restaurant for a late supper, paying city prices for two salads and a pitcher of sangria. Then we walked around in the chilly night a little bit. The streets were still busy. Surely the festival was still going on somewhere but we were too tired to find it. We heard later there was a parade, and big flags; later they were supposed to bring in the cows from the countryside, but we didn’t meet anyone who actually saw that happen.