Camino Torres

On Saturday night we stayed in the Albergue de Peregrinos Casa la Calera, which is currently in the capable and caring hands of Hospitaleras Norma from the US and Christina from Italy. Starting out on any Camino is rather daunting. You wonder are you mad to even think you can walk through Spain for weeks on end to eventually arrive in Santiago. At the end of the first day you decide you are mad but that, nevertheless, you think you have proved that you are capable of clocking up the miles day after day. We have enough sense to know that we are not really capable of logging up 32km in temperatures of more than 24C so we decided to break the first stage into two. We established that there was a hotel roughly halfway and set out with that as our goal. We thought it a relatively modest goal and took time to attend 9:00am Sunday Mass in Convento de San Estéban, a huge 16th century church near our albergue. We were on the Camino by 9:40am. San Estéban main altar We expected ...

Yellow arrow on tree is reassuring Breakfast in the hotel was at 7:30 so we were able to be on the road by 8 o'clock. Rad seems to be a substantial development of gated communities and by walking south and then southeast along the perimeter of these we were able to rejoin the Camino after 2.2 km. The day turned out to be longer than expected and the last few kilometres proved to be very tiring for both of us. The people of Robliza de Cojos seem to take their siestas seriously as the village appeared to be deserted when we arrived. We did meet a woman painting her house and when we asked about the albergue she went into action. After two or three seemingly unproductive phone calls she crossed the road to the house opposite and summoned the male occupant. After a brief discussion he invited us into his car and drove us the short distance to the albergue, a section of an old school. He first called at a house close to the albergue in the hope of obtaining the key but there wa...

The day started with the story of the bats but we were on our way by 8 o'clock, having to retrace some of the latter steps of the day before. The mornings are cold at this time of year and gloves wouldn't have been out of order but later in the day we were complaining bitterly about the heat. Single farm where there was once a community with its own church As was the case yesterday we walked through pleasant agricultural land and saw very few people indeed. The handful we did meet where either on tractors or some other sort of vehicle. We seemed to be in a bull breeding country and passed many of them in the fields. We also came across a couple of large flocks of sheep. I presume the farms are very large as we saw very few farmhouses. Just after passing the bulls our instructions were to open a gate and enter a field, although there was a "private" sign just beside the gate. We were a bit perturbed to find ourselves walking along a pathway inside the ...

With a longer walk ahead of us we left the albergue at 7:00am and made good progress. The first two or three kilometres were on tarmac and mostly uphill. We stopped for breakfast after eight kilometres, eating part of the fine ham and cheese boccadillos prepared by the barman the previous evening. This was described as the loneliest stage of the Camino Torres and after we left the tarmac we didn't see another person, vehicle or house for about 15 kilometres.  Erosion made descent difficult We had lots of hills to climb and dry riverbeds to cross on the latter half of the stage.  The path down to a couple of the riverbeds had been washed away making the descent quite difficult. I   shouldn't complain, however, as walking at another time of the year could require long detours to the nearest bridge.  We were quite pleased with our progress, despite the heat of the day, until we tried to cross the final riverbed which was very wide. The path delineat...

Everything seemed to be going according to plan until I had a minor mishap after about 4km. I tripped on the broken road edging and suffered a deep cut to my hand. We bandaged it up and carried on for another 3km to Bocacara, the only village en route. The first place we came to was the medical centre and we hit upon the one hour the nurse was on duty. She fixed it up, as well as a cut toe which another patient pointed out to me in the waiting room. I also asked the nurse to look at my left big toe which had been painful for the past three days, particularly at night. She couldn't see anything wrong and suggested it was a job for a hospital. City Wall overlooking Rio Aguieda We had lost time and then went off looking for breakfast. The bar wasn't due to open for another two hours so we debated our next move. That was decided when I discovered a water leak. We had hoped to stock up on food and water in Bocacara but now with the prospect of running out of both over...

Marialba Bridge We arrived in Gallegos de Arganan after a trek of 17.5km from Cuidad Rodrigo. The day  started with breakfast in the hotel and   we had   checked out by 7:40. We kept going for more than 8km without a stop and by then we had reached the top of our first hill. We had a few more to climb before we reached   the 17th century Marialba Bridge, about four kilometres from the end. We stopped there for a while as the bridge was the main reason for choosing this Camino. It was at Marialba, on April 27, 1811, that my great great grandfather, Henry Darragh (20), from Glaslough, Co. Monaghan, was wounded while on sentry duty. He lost a finger on his left hand in a skirmish involving the French. Me on Marialba Bridge We were in great shape up to the bridge but we then both started to wilt in extreme heat on the 2km climb up from the bridge. Nevertheless this was probably our best day to date.  Arriving at Gallegos de Arganan during siesta mig...