Camino de Santiago: September-October, 2012: 2012-09-23 Sunday

2012-09-23 Sunday

Castrojeriz / Fromista

Camino de Santiago Day 16. Today's distance is 25 Km.

Had breakfast at 0700, when the bar downstairs opened, I had just a cup of coffee with milk, toast and some fruit I had bought before. We hit the Camino at 0740 while it was still a bit dark, but soon we were witness to a beautiful sunrise. We took some pictures, but they do no justice to the magnificent scene.

Sunrise with the "La Colegiatta" Church bathed in light

Half an hour after leaving the village we wit the base of the only hill of this segment, a climb of 700 meters at a 12% incline to the top of the 1050 meters high mountain. What goes up has to come down, the descent even steeper at 18%. The only good thing was that the trail down the mountain was concrete paved. I walked down the trail making "S" curves as you do in downhill skying, to make it easier on the knees.

Erico - we have to climb that hill

Erico, the ascent is a steep one

Erico admiring the view from the top of the hill

Paulo going down the hill. See how flat the valley is.

The rest of the trail was on a complete flat terrain, but the wind was blowing 30-35 Km/hr, with much higher gusts that almost blew us sideways. There were only 2 villages along the way, the first about 9 Km from Castrojeriz, we bought sandwiches there to eat along the way, and the other 6 Km from Fromista. We arrived at our destination at 1430.

Paulo and I, arriving in Fromista

We met few acquaintances in this segment, in addition to Linda and Kathy, we only crossed paths with Michelle, three Dutch guys I have been meeting every few days and Cecilia, the Italian teenager. But we met new people: Germans, Australians and one Cuban-American.

Hostal in Fromista, Casa Rural Serviareas, is Rural only in the name, it's located right in the downtown area. The four of us plus Linda and Kathi have the first floor of the house, it consists of 3 bedrooms, a shared batch, kitchen and living/dining room. It has also a clothes washer, but no drier, we washed our clothes and hung them to dry outside.

The five of us went out to find a place to eat lunch, we found a bar and had pizza for lunch. After lunch we went our separate ways, Terry and Nancy returned to the hostel to take a "siesta" (Terry adopted the "siesta" habit wholeheartedly,) while Paulo and I went to another bar that had free wi-fi to access the internet, our hostel is the only one so far that did not have wi-fi. Linda stopped by later and had a couple of drinks with us.

At around 2000 Terry, Nancy, Paulo and I went out for dinner, Linda and Kathy said that they were full, being Sunday evening, there were not many places open, and we ended up going to a high class restaurant, linen table cloth, crystal wine glasses, waiter in jacket and tie kind of restaurant. We almost felt out of place with our pilgrim's garb. The food was excellent, the service outstanding. Terry treated us to an excellent Rioja Reserva wine.