Day 2 Hornillos to Castrojeriz 20km

Our taxi driver collected us this morning and dropped us off in Hornillos.

Our day began with our morning photo…

Our friend Stu lost his hat so Gregor fashioned his buff into a pirate style head scarf and we were off!

It was a hot day. Everything hurt a bit today after our first walking day. But some days that’s the Camino.

The wildflowers along the path were beautiful. Poppies, yellow daisies, purple nettles. Just exquisite.

I played music today, which I do on tough days. Listened to Neil Diamond which suited my mood and the trail. Nothing like belting out Sweet Caroline at alto voce on the meseta!

We are on the meseta so distance between towns is long and very little shade. On the way into catrojeriz we called into the abandoned monastery of san Anton.

We explored Castrojeriz. I got my dog fix on a walk through the town this afternoon. One pup was so affectionate towards me that its owner said ‘You don’t love me anymore! Marg and I watched the Handmaid’s Tale. lol. Sometimes you just need to do normal things when things aren’t normal.

Day 3: Castrojeriz to Poblacion de Campo. (30km ±)

What a long, hot, tiring day. Started early (6:30am) we knew we had a big hill to climb and it was going to be a long + hot day.
To be fair, the hill wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I would like to think that’s because I’m fit but probably I was just thinking it was worse than it actually was.

We stopped at Boadillo de Camino for our first sneaky Cerveza. We stayed there in 2017. Next stop Fromista for our 2nd sneaky cerveza. Thanks to my excellent navigation skills we took the wrong turn out of town so we had to backtrack which added another 2km to our walk. By the time we arrived at
Hotel Amancer in Población de campos, we were hot and exhausted.

I am definitely not cut out for long walks in the hot sun.

However to fuel my soul today I got some lovely dog kisses from this cutie…

After showers, we adjourned to the garden bar. I met some interesting pilgrims. Pierre- a Frenchman living in Belgium has a healthy distrust of muslims and is doing Camino to assert his Christianity. Then an Hungarian couple who have migrated to Miami and who are now real estate agents who ‘flip houses’. They thought Kamala Harris was a joke, supposedly don’t like trump but we were’nt convinced. We advised them to identify as Hungarian
rather than American on Camino.

We had a Communal Dinner, I worked the crowd, of course.

Marg + I watched the final episodes of the handmaid’s tall and were left disappointed ✗ confused.