The Camino: the middle (part one)

Because I had joined Selin on the Camino late, I missed walking through the Pyrenees. Instead, I started on the meseta, the second stage of the Camino. Later on, an albergue host told me the meseta was his favourite part because of the ‘mental challenge’ It is a very flat section of the walk with a lot on-road days and, whilst the scenery isn’t bad, the view falls short of those walking through the mountain range at the beginning.  The fourth day was very meseta-esque: 17km of an uninterrupted, straight road without any towns, off-road sections, or particularly noteworthy views. In general, the days when we just walked in a straight line were the hardest mentally, not helped by the fact they were normally on hard ground which was tough on feet and knees. When the 17km road ended at an albergue with a pool, we decided to call it a short day and have a beer and a swim. As they say – ‘Pilgrims gotta suffer!’

By my fifth day, my feet were suitably destroyed, resembling trench foot according to a kind man named Joe. Hill and I developed a hack to keep walking on our sore feet: you have to grin and bear the first 15 minutes of hobbling whenever you started or restarted walking and wait for your feet to go numb – in hindsight this isn’t really a hack. Selin was the pilgrim princess, walking in Hokas without a single blister.

From the pool albergue we walked to to Sahagun, a larger town. After discovering the albergue on the far side of the town was full, the group debated pushing on to the next town or turning back to try the town’s other albergue. It is quite a controversial move to go back on oneself during the Camino, if only to walk half a km back to the other hostel. However, it was already 4pm and the next town was 10km away.

More importantly, it was the final day of Sahagun’s bull racing festival and there was to be a ‘family-friendly’ bull chase through the main street that evening. A few hours later, I found myself stood in the middle of the fenced-in street, nervously deliberating if crocs had been a sensible shoe choice. We looked around, sussing out our fellow runners: ‘Yes, I could run faster than them – I’ll be ok.’ And then four bulls appeared at the end of the street and we ran. The idea of a bull chasing you is pretty exhilarating. Disappointingly, the spectator videos are not nearly as dramatic, showing us sprinting as fast as we could around the corner and the bulls lazily galloping behind us. After a few bowls of my highly questionable carbonara (an Italian woman who was in the kitchen at the time was sufficiently insulted on behalf of her country), we re-joined the festival, dancing in the rain with red wine spritzers (tinto de veranos) – sickeningly romanticized, I know. When we did eventually make it to bed, Luis found his bunk was under a particularly leaky patch of ceiling.

Having survived the bulls and the leak, we left Sahagun on a high only to miss the off-road route and instead walk 30km along a very straight road without any shade or water. In my mind, this day is emblematic of the meseta – I’m glad I did it however, not desperate to do it again. As Hill and I arrived in a town called Reliegos, extremely dehydrated and sore, we found Selin and Joe eating ice cream. After a beer, the other three went on to Mansilla – a town we had heard had no beds left. Not keen to sleep on a kitchen floor or fork out on a hotel, I stayed put and had a very restful evening sharing wine with a kind French man without speaking a word of one another’s languages.

After a replenishing night of sleep (let me reiterate once again, NOT on a kitchen floor) I left Reliegos early. 6km into my day I came across a very slow Selin. After we compared my lovely night of sleep to her night on a kitchen floor (shocking plot twist), we decided the day was not one to be rushed. Feeling a second coffee and pastry was necessary at our first breakfast stop, the mission of the day shifted. We had left that morning believing we were aiming to arrive in Leon that afternoon but over that second pan au chocolat, we realised the day’s purpose had become a cafe crawl. We only had another 10km to go until Leon at this point and we enjoyed those 10km. About 5 hours and many a cafe later we rolled into the town and checked into an albergue run by nuns. The city was nice and after a serious planning meeting at a bar, we decided to spend an extra day – our first and only rest day.

What a rest day! Feet were soaked and cleaned, blisters inspected, juicy fruit was eaten, plenty of drinks consumed, and most excitingly, we splashed out and booked a private room between 5 of us in a regular, non-pilgrim hostel. Whilst sharing a room with 50 strangers was great fun, a night free from snorers sounded divine. A strong effort was made to visit a local museum and immerse ourselves in Spanish culture, however, it was shut so we settled for introducing an American to an Aperol spritz – that’s enough European culture for a day.