Villarmentero de Campos to San Nicolas del Real Camino (somewhere between 42-48 km)

Got up at 7.  Didn't feel super great considering the wine we consumed last night.  We were the first ones up.  We got ready and were entertained by the hippies (enjoying each other) in their room while I put on sunscreen in the bathroom.  Adios to our favorite alburgue.  I don't think we will see another one like it.  The first 10km is easy going.  Rachel and I feel good!  We get to Carrion de los Condes around 10 am.  We stop at a pastry shop for breakfast.  Rachel has 2 ham and cheese croissants and a cafe con leche.  I have a ham and cheese crossant, a cream filled coissant and a peach juice.  I ordered the second round of of food by myself until the girl at the counter didn't follow my expected protocol of just giving me what I ordered.  Rachel came over to the rescue and I got what I wanted.  We picked up food at the Dia (a chain of supermercados, with supermercado being sort of a relative term).  A "supermercado" in Spain is about the scale of an Aldi here in the U.S..  We made our way through Carrion which looked to be a very nice town.  Best town since Burgos.  Wish we had more time here, but we don't.  We stop at the farmacia to get more ibuprofen and to purchase some ibuprofen cream that you can't get in the U.S.  The ibuprofens are 600 mg, so that is like taking 3 advil at a time.  The pharmacist made sure to point this out to us.

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.

Casterojez to Villarmentero de Campos (34 km)

Woke up feeling pretty decent considering that we put in 40 km yesterday.  My calves are the only sore spot.  We up and out by 8am.  This is supposed to be our longest mileage day, 43.3 km to Carrion de los Condes.  We started out great with our first climb over a mountain on the meseta.  The view was great, but covered with fog.  After about 90 minutes we came upon perhaps a bit of trail magic.  There were two guys with a table set up with coffee, cokes, fruit, and pastries.  Rachel asked how much and the guy spoke a bunch of spanish and she got the gist that it was "donativo".  Rachel got a cafe con leche as we both were feeling rather sluggish.  I didn't like it very much.  We made our way to the alburgue at Hospital de San Nicolas.  Our guide book said that the building had nice carvings and that sometimes the Italians running it would give out coffee to passing peregrinos.  Rachel loved the carvings, but they weren't offering coffee.  Through Itero de la Vega we start to show signs of trail fatigue.  I have a spot on my hip that has been rubbed raw from my pack.  Rachel is sunburned on her face and left neck, in spite of 70 spf sunscreen.  We are both just too white. :)

Our goal was to hike 25k to Fromista for lunch so we stopped for a snack between Itero and Boadilla del Camino.  We probably should have gone ahead and stopped here for lunch, but we wanted to try to stay on schedule.  The last 3 km before Fromista were a slog and both of us were starting to hurt.  Fromista was exceptional and had the coolest church we have seen yet, San Martin.  Our book said it was a perfect example of a Romanesque church, and it was right.  Beautifully preserved/restored with amazing detail and carvings.  I doubt we will see one better.  We actually even paid to go inside.  And we did all this before lunch.

After spending 20 minutes trying to decide on a place to eat, I go and screw it all up.  I ordered a pizza which took 30 minutes to get.  It was good, but it wasn't even what I ordered.  I ordered a hawaian pizza and they brought me some sort of veggie/meat one.  It still sucks not to speak Spanish well.  I did pay on my own though without Rachel so I am getting alot better.  I should be self sufficient by the end of the trip.  We left around 3pm so it looked like another 7pm arrival time for us.  The road to Carrion was tedious.  It was a gravel path along the side of a paved road.  I would have loved to have had a bike.  We put in 5km easily, but then Rachel started to struggle after another 3 km.  At the 34 km mark Rachel was completely exhausted and hurting.  Luckily we were coming into Poblacion de Campos.  We figured we could get her a coke and a rest, and then move on.

We plopped down in front of an alburgue that wasn't in our book.  They were playing reggae beat music and there was a garden with hammocks hanging from the trees and real grass.  I knew that if we went in for a drink we were done.  We are looking in our book, figuring out what accommodations might be ahead and this guy comes from across the street.  He speaks English and invites us in.  Turns out he is a peregrino as well.  That is all Rachel needed for her to call it a day at 5:15 and 10k short.  There were two black lab puppies and a couple of other dogs running around playing.  It is like this oasis has appeared out of the middle of nowhere.  Everyone was lounging around, listening to music, and chilling.

We met serveral people, Fermin and his girlfriend Doris from Miami, Andy from England, a couple of hippies from Germany and Italy and the laid back owner.  Rachel nicknames the place the land of misfit toys.  Doris and the hippie girl from Germany both have tendonitis, there is another girl named Rachel who is having knee problems and has been sick.  My Rachel is just exhausted.

We had an excellent time sitting around, lounging, sipping vino tinto and speaking fluent English with people.  Fermin and Doris are fluent in both English and Spanish, so they do some translating amongst the group.  Fermin was laid off and Doris quit her job to come on the camino.  We drank two bottles of wine and then went to bed.  I am worried that we are only on day 2 and are already down 10 km.  I don't know if we will be able to make up for this much lost mileage, but it it was completely worth it for the fantastic evening.

Burgos to Castrojeriz (40km)

This journal will now be in the voice of Chris, because he took over writing because Rachel is a slacker.

Sleeping was great since we only had maybe 4 hours of sleep in the last 30 hours. The only problem was all of the people partying until 5am and me wanting to go join them. That and the 3 guys that kept snoring and waking us up constantly. Ended up getting up around 6:30 because of the many inconsiderately loud peregrinos (pilgrims). There were also loudspeaker announcements wishing us good morning and giving us a countdown to 8am when we had to be gone from the alburgue. We are finally on the trail after days of travel to get here. Rachel has us down for hiking 36 kilometers today to Convento de San Anton, but wants to try to go another 4 km to Castrojerez so that the next day will be shorter (43.3 km). The countryside is very pleasant. Beautiful in its own way. It isn't wilderness hiking, but it is certainly enjoyable. We figured out that we can hike about 5km/hour. This is what we estimated at home, AWESOME!

We bust through 20km before we stop for lunch at Hornillos de Camino. We had to wait 30 minutes before we could get the "menu del dia". Rachel said that she thinks you might get more wine with this one than we got the night before with the menu de peregrino. We did get a whole bottle of wine and a 3 course meal for 19 Euros total. Fantastic! We also have an excellent conversation with an Italian guy that is around our age and an older guy from Holland. The guy from Holland says that he started from his front door and has been walking ever since. Crazy. I wis that I was him. He also said that he hasn't worked in 30 years. I really wish I was him. The Italian guy has hiked the Camino, or parts of it, the last 3 years. He had on a shirt with the Camino symbol on it and a tatoo with the symbol on his leg. He was a fast hiker as he passed us later on that day. He actually spent 3 months living in Roswell, GA in 2008. Small world. This was our first conversation with fellow Peregrinos in English. Also at lunch we met our first American. He was from Phoenix. He questioned us on why were were doing this. We told him because we wanted to see Spain and hike. Then he asked us again why and we told him because we wanted to. He then asked us again and Rachel had to spell it out that we were not religious pilgrims paying a penance or looking for an indulgence, but that we were merely secular pilgrims looking for a hiking trip to experience some culture.

We hike 10 more km and take a break at a bar in Hontanas.  Rachel got a coke.  While she was in the restroom I ordered a small beer and got charged 4.60 Euros!  Pretty sure that I got screwed (Rachel: yes, yes you did).  At least I got a stamp.  Better yet, I ordered on my own.  First time yet.  We probably should have stopped here but we pushed on.  We got to Convento de San Anton.  The guide book listed it as being partially outdoors.  That mean basically it is like an Appalachian Trail shelter.  There are cubbies of rooms in the ruins.  We would have frozen here if we stayed.  The bags we brought can't handle the 40 F nights.  We pushed on to Castrojeriz.  Rachel was hating the last 4km, but we made it at 7pm.  The first two places to stay that we tried were "completo".  Rachel nearly had a meltdown, but we backtracked about 1km to an alburgue at a campground.  It is a big metal barn with bunks.  Nice, good showers and bathrooms.

We try to find the supermercado and finally do at 7:59.  They close at 8.  We grabbed some bannas and donuts for breakfast and a bottle of vino tinto to cap off the evening.  Total cost was 3.04 Euros.  The wine was only 0.87 Euros.  And it was good too.  We watched a little soccer in the bar at the campground.  Barcelona won.  We split a chorizo bocadillo.  Not too bad.  We hand washed some laundry in the laundry sinks and hung it out to dry.  It probably won't.  We showered and then went to bed for our next day which is supposed to be 44.3 km.

Rachel:  Chris says he doesn't remember this, but in the middle of the night a woman came over and woke him up because he was snoring.  She woke me up too because she was shaking the bunkbed that we were sleeping in.  She told him that he was keeping everyone up.  I was too groggy to react, but it was pretty funny in hindsight.