Sahagun to El Burgo Ranero
“You didn’t come this far to only come this far”
Another short walk today, 17km to El Burgo Ranero, a one horse town minus the horse, which probably had more sense than to hang about here. Initial impressions of this place are not hugely positive; we’re about to go out and see if we can find somewhere to eat. Perhaps when we’ve been fed and watered we’ll feel differently.
Carolyn has taken to grading the quality of the haystacks we see throughout our walks. So far, on a scale of 1 to 10, nothing has scored higher than a 4. I personally feel that her judgements are extremely harsh. She claims to assess (i) height (ii) tightness of the individual bales (iii) aesthetic quality of the stacking. It would appear, on the basis of her scoring, that Spanish farmers are completely incompetent when it comes to haystack building. They look fine to me. She’s a fanatic.
Ok, we ate the peregrino menu at the hotel and it was excellent! The spaghetti with chorizo was quite superb. The beer was served in an iced glass (Cruzcampo); also terrific. In a nutshell, accommodation pretty rubbish, food excellent. Having eaten, we’re going round the corner to have a look at the church (we are hard core) before having another refreshment. In an iced glass, hopefully.
I’ve said nothing about today’s walk because it was completely uneventful. More fields filled with haystacks etc. etc. until we arrived in the adobe style main street of the town/village. The walls of adobe houses are constructed using mud and straw, if you were wondering.
We did, however, have a chat with some Americans from Maine who were very nice. A few of them spoke fluent Spanish and one bloke helped Carolyn buy the appropriate gel plaster for her foot. Some of them were buying Compeed plasters. Carolyn turned to one of the Americans and said “ It would be nice to have some shares in Compeed, don’t you think?” The American, bemused, looked at Carolyn, mumbled “I’m sorry, no habla Espanol”, and looked to his Spanish speaking friend for help. “She’s speaking English, you douchebag “ his friend advised, much to the poor guy’s mortification. Carolyn found it very funny. I reassured the poor American fellow that she was actually using a rare West of Scotland dialect that few Americans were likely to have encountered before. He didn’t seem convinced. I might also add he completely understood my New England accent.
Tomorrow it’s onwards to Mansillas de Los Mulas. I suspect it’s another quiet one, but I’m sure it’ll be full of character. The church was closed, today by the way.
Today’s album track is “ Get The Message”(single mix) by Electronic, because sometimes it just gets lost in translation……..
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/carolynandfraserwalkingthecaminoforlisasgift
