September 25: Out of the bubble

Sometimes, being on Camino reminds you how much you share with others. Sometimes, it shows you how peculiar you are.

Our Homestay for last night was 4km off the trail. We finished the stage and headed off down the road to find our homestay. This turned out to be in a quiet village with a large church, an indoor football (soccer) field and a friendly café-cum-restaurant, where we had a beer for lunch.

When we arrived at the door, our host, Anna, was aghast. She demanded to know why we hadn’t called for a pick-up. Simply, we weren’t told a pick-up was available. She was really quite upset and insisted we complain to our travel agent. We didn’t, (and won’t). For us, the day was planned to be short. The extra kilometres were not burdensome. The mix-up/omission came up at the communal dinner last night and everyone commiserated with us, despite our protestations. However, this morning, Carey and I decided to walk back under our own steam, refusing the drop-off offered by our host. This had our fellow pilgrims floored: that anyone would choose extra kilometres just did not compute. Anna even pulled up beside us as she returned from dropping the others off, just to double check we really didn’t want a ride.

In fact, the walk back to Mansilla de las Mulas, where we picked up the trail was lovely. Unusually, we walked into the rising sun (as the Camino is generally westward, so sunrise is almost always behind you): the long light picked out the grasses and seed heads, and threw spindly shadows across our path. Our breath billowed out in clouds. Autumn is definitely in the air. Another, formerly-strategic, town, Mansilla still sports much of its 12th Century fortifications: huge yellow walls, a mix of straw adobe and sandstone; crumbling, but still impressive cylindrical towers and hefty gates, patched with red bricks. They all looked quite noble in the amber light.

Leon is a city famous for its cathedral, basilica and selection of monasteries. Sadly, the selling point of our hotel, (and it is a city hotel, not a guest house or hostel), is its proximity to El Cortes Inglés, a fancy department store. As Carey noted, it is a kind of modern “cathedral”, but we have definitely stepped out of the Camino bubble for a while.

Even though we added around 45 minutes to our walk today, and stopped for long coffee, we still made it into Leon by 2pm. We have a rest day here tomorrow, so we have settled in a little. We have already stacked our fridge, (we have a fridge!), with supermarket beer. We’ve thumped and soaked a pile of clothes in the bath, (we have a bath!), which have a solid 2 days to dry. We have opened the packet of chocolate digestives I’ve been carrying about since Frómista. There is a gentle snore, drifting up from a showered, snacked Carey. In many ways, it’s been a perfect afternoon.