We head out of carrion around 11 and then begins 17.5 km of pure hell. It is an old Roman road through the middle of nowhere that is very flat, dusty, and rocky. Oh yeah, there are gnats too. There is really nothing scenic at all. An entrepreneur set up a bar out of a trailer at about the half-way point. We bought a coke and a beer and ate the bread, sausage, and cheese that we had bought at the grocery store in Carrion. Andy from the night before caught up and we chatted for a bit. He builds scenic sets for theaters, but is not working right now. He is going to look for a job near Santiago, so he has all the time in the world to finish.
At the end of this 17.5 km of nothing, lay about 14 more km of hiking along a main road to San Nicolas. Rachel broke out her mp3 player to try to pass the time. We both would sing along when singable songs came on. Our pace picked up some and several peregrinos laughed as we passed. But hey, we were having fun and it made the time go faster. We made it to Terradillos de los Templarios and Rachel is breaking down again. Right at about 35 km, and 5:15. She is the model of consistency. We stop to take a break at the front yard of an alburgue. We can either stop here or push on. If we stop that means that we are a total of 15km down. We deside to gon, which turns out to be a big mistake. Rachel gets worse. Big props to her for toughing it out, but I end up carrying her bag the last 3.5 km to San Nicholas. We arrive at 7:15 after hiking 42 km. The alburgue is serving dinner at 7:30 so we drop our stuff upstairs and join the other peregrinos for dinner in the dining room. We sit at a table with a Brit and a German. The Brit lives in Spain with his gilfriend and they have a baby. He swapped off taking care of the baby full time while she finished her PhD, for the ability to hike the camino.
After dinner Rachel begins to take care of her feet and they are bad. She has blisters on both fe and they are very badly swollen. We won the battle today by making our goal, but may have lost the war. We are not sure if she can make it the 36km to Religious tomorrow. We discuss a train to Leon and cutting out 55 km. I really don't want to, but I don't want her to suffer and be miserable. This is a vacation after all.
Before going to bed we sit in the common area and look at the route to see what mileage we might be able to cut out. A French and German guy stop to see what we are doing. The French guy is trying to tell us that we do not want to take the road route, but rather the river route. This is what we would prefer to do, but the river route is longer and there is no option to cut the day short along that route. We compare maps and his map shows the river route meeting up with the road route in a different spot than ours. Trying to discuss is quite hard because no one speaks the same language. The French guy is very insistant that his map is right and that our 3 maps are wrong. I understand how the French get their reputation for being pretentious based on this guy. Hopefully Rachel will feel better in the morning.
