The following
morning the other pilgrims in the dormitory were very slow to get up – I suppose
unlike us, they had been walking for approximately a fortnight already. Even
so, having been awake since 6.30 am and since there was no sign of anyone
switching the lights on, I felt that by 7.30 I was justified in doing so
myself.
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| San Miguel |
Personally, I like the albergues where the Hospitalero comes around at
7.00 and switches the lights and roars good morning on as this takes the
responsibility off other pilgrims who want to get up but don’t feel they can do
so out of politeness. I also don’t like leaving albergues in the dark as I am
afraid of leaving stuff behind, and as other people still try and do so, loudly
rustling bags and “lamping” those still in bed with their head torches (like our
Korean friend back in Belorado), the lights may as well be switched on anyway!
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| Lancet window, San Miguel |
The previous
night I had enjoyed talking to Erkan – a pleasant young man from Turkey who now
lives in Germany and works in the VW Spare Parts factory. He was being joined on
the Camino in León by his brother. Erkan told me that his parents and Uncle
thought he was quite mad to be using his holiday to go walking across Spain
instead of relaxing by a pool! He was obviously a deep thinker as he was reading
a large and weighty tome by Dostoyevsky. The following morning, Erkan was still
in bed as we prepared to leave at 8.10, but our gregarious Australian friends
(Jim, a Pentecostal pastor, Reuben and Dan) were already loudly up and about.
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| Heather, Matthew & David leaving Poblacion de Campos |
We made our way
down the street, past San Martín, to the same bar for breakfast where we had
waited for the taxi in October 2015 and then we set off out of town following
behind two Italian pilgrims who had a were clearly smoking joints as there was
a pungent smell of weed! The day’s walking was dominated by a chilly wind
blowing from the South, gravel tracks and wide-open fields, punctuated only
very occasionally, by a flowering tree with which I was unacquainted.
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| Virgen del Rio |
We quickly
crossed the A67 dual carriageway, which runs west of Frómista, on a flyover bridge
and encountered a modern pilgrim sculpture consisting of a flat sheet of rusty
steel, out of which a pilgrim seemed to striding. It seemed like the pilgrim
was breaking out of the two dimensionality of their flat existence into a new
sphere of reality and I thought it a very suitable metaphor of the new horizons
and avenues in life that walking the Camino can open up!
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| David resting at Virgen del Camino |
Nearby, was the
lovely little hermitage of San Miguel set back from the road amidst some trees
with it’s weathered, honey-coloured stone and a bricked up gothic arch that
suggested to me that the hermitage was perhaps originally planned as the
chancel of a much larger church that was never completed?
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| Knights Templar Church at Villalcazar de Sirga |
When we reached
the river at Población de Campos, we took the quieter optional route away from
the Senda and main road and passing another interesting medieval chapel, sunk
down below the modern street level, struck out along a farm track and then
along a gravel path lined by a poplar plantation beside the rather diminutive
rio Ucieza.
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| Portal of Knights Templar Church |
Our guidebook
had a café symbol at Villovieco, but this was closed and there wasn’t even a
shop in the village and as we were now desperate for second breakfast and
Heather was feeling tired, we cut across to Revenga de Campos, only to find
that the café there too was closed. By now the sun had come out and the
temperature had warmed up a little, so we shed a few layers and resigned
ourselves to a cereal bar and some fruit, before returning to Villovieco and
walking on alongside the river.
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| Sitting with a pilgrim friend at Villalcazar de Sirga! |
Many storks
were foraging in the expansive fields or else taking to the air to clatter
their beaks in courtship displays. We also saw some type of wild canid running
across the fields in the distance; it was probably a fox, but by the time we
accessed our binoculars, it had crested the hill and was gone.
David and I
walked on ahead and reached the large Baroque hermitage of the Virgen del Rio,
which being set on a small hill, allowed us to rest and survey the view from a small
bench. By the time Heather and Matthew joined us a few minutes later, Heather
was struggling a little due to sore feet, tiredness and a headache and was a
little tearful.
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| Villalcazar de Sirga |
After checking
that Heather was ok, David and I felt it would be good to give Matthew and
Heather a few minutes of privacy to rest and recuperate and so we walked on to
Villalcázar de Sirga. I was really looking forward to seeing the Knights
Templar church; the transitional Romanesque 13th century church of Santa María la Blanca. It is famous for
the seated statue of the Virgen Blanca to which the poet-king Alfonso X “the
wise” attributed 12 miracles, the polychrome reliefs on the high altar and the gothic
tombs of Don Pedro, fifth son of Fernando III “the holy” and his wife. However,
all these treasures were denied to me as the owner of the local bar informed us
that the church is only open on Sundays! One day too late!! I consoled myself
by examining the enormously tall porch which frames a richly carved portal and
by enjoying watching a resident Kestrel which was wheeling around the church
and plaza.
We entered the
bar and had two very large bocadillos and a glass of Rioja followed by a slice
of flan and a café con leche. Matthew and Heather soon joined us and after lunch
I used a rather fun statue-cum-seat installation of a medieval pilgrim to get
out my podiatry supplies and do some first aid on Heather’s feet.
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| Doorway Villalcazar de Sirga |
Heather was by
now feeling much better and fortified by food and fellowship we marched on Carrión
de los Condes, checking into the albergue at the convent of Santa Clara on the
outskirts of the town. We had walked 20.5km in 6 hours and 35 minutes.
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| Matthew & Heather approaching Carrion de los Condes |
St. Francis of
Assisi supposedly stayed in Santa Clara on his pilgrimage to Santiago and it
had a lovely courtyard that I liked with a stone cross in the middle, a loggia
and a small well. The hospitalero was a friendly but an extremely lugubrious character,
who gave the impression of having the weight of the world upon his shoulders.
He provided us with two twin rooms which were quite comfortable, except for the
fact that they were extremely cold. Luckily, I had my three seasons sleeping
bag and there were plenty of blankets. Matthew and Heather complained that the
shower upstairs was also freezing, but this may have been because I enjoyed a
delightfully warm shower downstairs and perhaps this diverted all the warm
water!
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| Convent of Santa Clara |
After showering
we went to investigate the town centre. The remains of a ruined gateway topped
by a Spanish flag mark the entrance to the town centre. Heather and David went
off to find a supermarket to buy some supplies and Matthew and I spent a few
minutes sitting in the 12th century church of Santa María del
Camino. The south door has a porch which frames a very worn portal which is
hard to interpret and is supposed to represent a miracle in which Carrión was
freed from a tribute of 100 virgins which Christian Spain had to provide to the
Muslims during the period of the Muslim conquests of the Iberian peninsula.
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| Courtyard of Santa Clara |
The main
enjoyment for me however, was just to sit quietly with Matthew, meditate and
just watch the comings and goings of people entering the church for prayer and
worship. Sister Mary Coombes from the Leb Shomea (a listening heart) Community
in Texas has said that ‘Silence is not “me and God” but a way of being present
to each other in God’ and that is certainly how I feel when I spend time
praying and meditating with Matthew. I don’t have many friends like that and it
is something for which I am very grateful and value immensely.
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| Remains of town walls, Carrion de los Condes |
After about
half an hour we met Heather and David outside the church and walked around
town. I admired the 12th century west façade of the Church of Santiago.
The church itself was sacked and burned at the beginning of the 19th
century by Napoleonic troops, but the façade survives and has a finely carved
frieze well worth examination. Christ sublimely sits in majesty in the centre
of the composition, flanked by the symbols of the Evangelists and the figures
of the disciples. In the archivolts of the portal 24 figures represent “trades,
skills, games and battle scenes” according to Lozano.
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| Portal of Santa Maria del Camino |
In the Plaza
Generalisimo we bumped into the Australians once more and then walked down to
the rio Carrión, observing how the old town is well situated on a rocky bluff
above the river – a very defendable site well chosen by the Counts of Carrión,
the rulers of the area in the Medieval period.
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| Christ in Majesty, Church of Santiago |
We really
enjoyed our walk and liked the town and rounded off the evening with an
excellent pilgrim menu in a local restaurant near Plaza Santillana. Matthew
complained that I was taking too long to decide which restaurant to go into,
but I do start to dither when I am hungry (whereas he becomes fractious 😉)and we did make the right choice in the end. We also enjoyed talking to
another pilgrim – Denis from Cork, who it turned out, recognised David’s face
from his years in the Fire Service and was walking approximately 50km a day!
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| Pillar on portal of Chruch of Santiago |
After dinner we
returned to Santa Clara, where we prayed before bed and then were glad to retreat
to the insulation of our sleeping bags due to the freezing tempertures. In the
early hours of the morning I got up to use the toilet and within a couple of
minutes I was literally shaking with the bone numbing cold and was glad to run
down the corridor and dive back into my sleeping bag as quickly as possible!
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| Matthew & Heather enjoying dinner |
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