Below is moratinos....the hobbit hole houses struck me as interesting... (anyone know--are these
REALLY houses?...seem like they would be awfully dark! but they seemed to be houses as they had TV antennaes and stuff coming out of them...)
Moratinos cemetery--so tiny!
below: I remember being SO glad to finally be approaching Sahagun...saw this marker which i thought meant we were close but turned out that we really had a couple more K left... This day was sort of the breaking point for my feet, just too much weight for too far and too long.. I really stumbled into Sahagun (only to find there was not a single open albergue there. Two ladies carried (more like just about dragged, actually!) my bag the last couple k into town for me, and even with them having hte bag i was still stumbling and limping on my poor feet It was beginning this day that i remember having constant and continuous problems with my feet for the rest of the camino.
after finding everything closed in sahagun, and feeling like an orphan, being passed from one helpful person to another, but with noone being able to find anything open, we finally ended up in the tiny albergue at caza de coto (see blog post from this day for more details). while i was thankful to have somewhere inside to be for the night, this albergue is definitely on my "avoid" list--no heat, no kitchen, and i managed to put grainnes sleeping bag down in a spot that had apparently recently been sprayed with roach killer, as her sleeping bag smelled like RAID for the rest of the trip. ICCCK. though this albergue had hot water, i didnt use the showers because the air and building itself was so freezing. anyway, with no kitchen, i scrounged in the tiny tiny little shop for something suitable for dinner. i was dying for fresh food (i.e. fruits and veggies) after having not had a proper dinner the night before,no shop in the town the night before, then having come across no shops all day except, if i remember correctly, a tiny one at an albergue in ledigos(sp?) where i managed to get a pack of cookies and some more chocolate (i think this was this day, anyway)... i was really hungry this day and feeling really run down because i needed more food :( was looking forward to getting to sahagun to a proper supermarket....but we ended up loading into a truck and being driven around to every possible albergue until ending up in caza de coto because it was the only one nearby open...so i missed the supermarket. so hungry and kitchenless on a cold rainy evening in an unheated hostel..., this sandwich was my improvised dinner... it wasnt good, but at least it was SOME fresh stuff, and better than alot of the junk i'd been eating. beginning the past few days before this, and continuing for the rest of the camino was when i started to depend on chocolate for getting me through the days...which wasnt what i really wanted to do, because despite the ideas we have about sugar and caffeine giving us energy, it would always make me "crash" later...
because we were often on our own, most of the pics i took had to be either taken by me at arms' width, or i also sought out mirrors or shiny shop windows to take our pic in :)
this one came out better since we asked a man washing windows to please take our pic ;) hahaha--i notice now, only after remembering who took the pic--that his window washing tool is actually in the forefront of the picture, lol!
baby G messing with the fountains in leon. we trudged and trampled through leon, and it was very poorly marked. i never knew if we were still on the camino path, and kept asking people. some were helpful, some hadnt a clue what i was talking about, and another tried to direct us to some important church or cathedral that they really thought we should see, but all i was interested in was getting out of leon. it was a big city and i bet it would have been interesting to spend more time there, but we couldnt. shortly after the below picture, grainne launched herself at a dog, and threw me off balance and me and my billion pound pack went crashing to the ground... i was ok, but touched that someone stopped to help me up. couldnt WAIT to get out of the city, too many dogs, too much congestion, not very pretty on the outskirts, and very poorly marked. a bit out of of the center of leon, but in the ugly industrial district, we met up with a couple more pilgrims. i guess they went the other way when i went to mazarife as we never saw them again.
more hobbit hole houses leaving leon. one of the guys i was walking with for a short distance said that he heard they used to be wine cellars, but didnt know what they were now.
below: several days before this was the beginning of me napping alongside the path. here, i believe it was going from leon to villa de mazarife. i was wrecked, i felt like we were on a plateau, and it was cold and windy. i think this was the first of the two times i stopped on this path to nap. it became an increasingly common occurence as the camino progressed because i often felt just WIPED OUT. at this point of the camino, it was still very cold weather and i couldnt stop for very long because G would start shivering. later on, when it was warmer, my naps and breaks got longer and longer, which is part of why we ended up arriving places so late. but it just got to the point where i was so wrecked i had no energy left and would have to lay down and have a "napper." oftentimes i felt like i got more beneficial sleep during these quick naps than i did at night. seldom was there a night that i actually slept well on the camino. this surprised me because i would have thought that with all that walking and being so tired i would have slept like a rock. but i seldom slept soundly, no matter if i was in my tent, an albergue on the floor, or even an albergue in a bed. bad sleep was probably in part due to TOO MUCH CAFFEINE!...
below: the road leaving villa de mazarife. this day started out well, and we were walking with another pilgrim who had just started. unfortunately we BOTH managed to go off track because an albergue had posted a yellow arrow going off to the village that the albergue was in, but that village wasnt actually on the camino. VERY frustrating, and added about 4 k to our day. this was the day we were supposed to have an easy 8 or 10 k to hospital de orbigo, but ended up getting sent on to santibanez, because of grainne, and then turned away at santibanez, only to almost end up walking another 8k in the dark but saved at the last minute by an SUV and went joyriding on the camino path the last 8 k to astorga... (p.s. if anyone knows where to report things like where the path isnt clear, such as this place after villa de mazarife, and a few others too, so that the markers can be improved, pls email me or post in the comments section--thanks!)
below: road towards santibanez. lovely beautiful evening. arriving in santibanez and getting turned away and anticipating another 10 k in the dark was ANYTHING BUT LOVELY THOUGH..but then we got to barrel down the path in the SUV so that was cool. gave us more stories anyway.
below: the path from astorga to rabbanal. there was supposed to be some famous cross or tree or something towards the end of this path approaching rabbanal, but we missed it somehow. approaching rabbanal, we JUST missed the brunt of the very bad snow/rainstorm that moved in that evening. i think this day was weird/mixed weather, because i think i also remember taking off my jacket and some layers at some point because it was pretty warm earlier, especially with the pack. but then it got cold and very windy later, if i remember correctly. though maybe im mixing up my days. this path to rabbanal, at the beginning, had a lot of flatness to it, then later on it climbed considerably. we stopped alot this day too (surprise, surprise.... seems to be becoming a theme here... ) i remember stopping for a long lunch on the flat straight path towards the beginning, just sitting down on the pathway, then again to try to nap near (??)st catherine or something, if there is a town with such name, then facing alot of strong winds later in the day and stopping at a rest stop but not being able to stop for long because of hte cold and the wind and the lateness of the day... and then finally stopping again in a forest grove of pine trees to look at my map again and gro being really tired and curling up and it being so so windy and me just wanting to curl up and sleep but we couldnt cuz we werent there yet..then getting to rabbanal and going through the village and nothing was open except the one hostel which was at the far end of the village. before entering the village i passed a stables, which i made note of, because previously some walkers had told me that they had met the people from the stables in a previous town in a bar or albergue or something and that if gro and i couldnt find anywhere to sleep in rabbanal, then maybe to try the stables. fortunately, we didnt have to. there wasnt anywhere to get food in rabbanal though, except for a bar, which i didnt want to pay the money for, so i made soup out of the remaining stuff i had in my bag--sprouted lentils, seaweed, salt, oil, bread...not spectacular but was ok and apparently my body liked it as it was enough fuel to help me through the next day which was REALLY strenous with the blowing howling knock you down wind. i didnt know if we were actually going to be able to leave rabbanal the next morning, we had a mountain to go up, and the weather was atrocious during the night, snow, etc, and still raining when we got up. i was kind of hoping other people would decide to stay another night, so we could ask as well, but when everyone else decided to push on, i decided we had better as well. it was SO windy though. and we couldnt take the camino path because it was covered in snow; we had to stay along the roadsides.
i forget what this is...something on the path to rabbanal...but dont remember which village :(
below: sitting in the kitchen at the albergue at rabbanal. over the next few days i "lost" most of these people i had been walking with on and off for a few days..they all outwalked us and i never saw them again. i was glad to be outwalked by the guy who had intentionally and cruelly shown me the slain pig, as i didnt care to ever see him again, but there were others that were enjoyable to be with.
Hi Kirsten (kaybee).
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I have photos of you and dog.
kickertz@t-online.de
The church with bell tower photo is at Santa Catalina de Samoza just after Astorga.
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