Camino : El Burgo Ranero to Léon

I started by 7:15 AM from the Albergue and had a plan to walk 37 km, not too much and not too little. The destination was Léon and that is one of the biggest towns on this Camino.

Today, the next town from start was at a 13 kilometer distance and that signified an over two hours of walk to finally get the caffeine fix.

As I stopped to admire and take a picture of the crucifix, I saw two people walking in front of me and another walking in front of them. It was raining and miserable, I slowly kept plugging away and soon caught up to the two people in front of me.

They were in yellow and red rain ponchos respectively, two women from Melbourne, Australia. And in front of them, was the third person in a red rain poncho, the husband of one of the sisters.

Walking with them for a bit and chit- chatting, I continued further and saw that the dawn was progressing very nicely, revealing the imminent sunrise.

The rain was on-again and off-again. I was happy to see Daniel from France, the person who I had seen on the most number of days. He just passed me by on his bicycle and flashed his inimitable smile.

It was a long and peaceful road, and I just passed a small airfield for a town named VillaMarco for small propeller planes and private jets. Last night, I had heard a plane flying in its direction as I was reaching El Burgo Renero.

There was a small waystation, which was more like a picnic spot on the side of the road with many benches, and if not for the drizzle and gray skies, it would have been a perfect picnic spot.

I was happy that I had almost reached the town which was 13 km away, and awaited expectantly for it to reveal itself to me momentarily.

Sure enough, the Albergue was close by and had a café that was open. Although it had no Wi-Fi, the lady who was running it had a friendly demeanor and she gave me a good coffee. Shortly, thereafter, the three Australians made their way into the café, and we got a chance to catch up a little bit more.

The sign above showed that I was 335 km from my destination, which indicated that I was in the last half of the trip.

I was at the town of Mansilla de las Mulas, and it had a good sculpture of a couple of pilgrims.

I passed by the typical church in the middle of the town, which has the bells at the top, a very familiar scene in most towns.

I had walked a bit and was still in need of some refreshments. I came across this spot which had a bar. In US, bars are usually for drinks, but here in Spain, I noticed that bars serve drinks, which could be beers, wines, or hard liquor, along with different kinds of foods, typically called bocadillos and tapas.

I tried to open the door and it was closed, indicating that the bar is not open. That sounds pretty obvious, but I have made a new habit to actually try to open and push in the door of the places I visit, because many of them seem like they could be closed, but are actually open and have many people inside.

Continuing further, I came through a very beautiful dense forest, which was quite a pleasure to walk in.

A river ran by which made the walk even more pleasant for quite a long while.

The dense woods were pretty serene and there was nobody else in sight, so I walked in peace for quite a long time.

I came around a bridge and saw that there were two paths that river was taking, and it joined together showing the letter Y.

I was now in Vilasbariega and walking towards Villasturiel.

I saw a bakery and it was a pretty big establishment. They had many types of baked goods, and the pastries looked delicious. I did not know what to order and lady at the counter did not speak English. However, there was a Spaniard behind me who spoke English and he came to my rescue.

Just next door to the bakery was a place which had many sculptures on display for sale. It was quite interesting to see hundreds of sculptures, which were Buddhist, Hindu and generally kind of out of place, so far away from the fareast.

The Camino continued through the farmlands, the day was a little cloudy, and it was quite a pleasure to keep walking, now that I had had a lot of delicious food.

I had been listening to music as I walked, and it was so nice to have the full 5G signal throughout so far. YouTube provided me access to decades of really pleasant music that I had grown up with in multiple languages. I am very happy to inherit very well known and prolific singers, like Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Hemant Kumar, Atif Aslam, Arijit Singh, Asha Bhosale, R D Burman, and others whose songs kept me entertained and occupied for many, many hours during this hike.

I also used my time to catch up on the various books I had bought and downloaded on my audible subscription. In the past few days, I had been alternating between the book by Richard Dawkins named 'the selfish gene', which was so fascinating. I was also listening to the book named 'quiet' by Susan Cain in parallel, my second one by the author whom I admired.

I came to a huge bridge that let people cross from one side of the highway to another, and wondered if I had to cross the highway. However, as I approached it, I discovered that I had to keep going straight.

The bridge was actually a good look into what lay ahead and it seemed like my destination for the day, Léon, was just on the horizon.

I also saw the cathedral, which was the highlight of Léon, far in the distance.

In the past several days, that I had been walking through the regions of Castillo & Léon, the boards, indicating the directional arrow always had the words: Castillo & Léon. I used to see that some vandals had blocked out the word Léon in the province of Castilla and the opposite was happening in the region of Léon. In most of the places, the boards had a black spray paint blocking the word, and this was the first instance of me seeing a yellow spray paint.

A beautiful, flowery meadow in the foreground with a beautiful bridge in the background, welcomed me to the start of the city of Léon.

Passing the bridge, I came to the similar church with multiple bells on top.

Soon enough, traversing through the city streets, which were cobbled, I came to the Albergue that I was going to stay for the night, a very old one named Santa Maria de Carbajal, which only charged a donation of €10. They also were quite willing to get my clothes washed and dried in less than two hours for a sum of eight euros.

I used two applications for finding good food; one was called theFork and the other was the guideMichelin. Unfortunately, I was in Léon on Monday and several Michelin rated restaurants were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. However, from theFork app, I found a restaurant named Loco Léon.

In the three minute walk from the Albergue to the restaurant, I discovered the beautiful, grand cathedral of Léon, which I had spotted from several miles away.

The highly decorative, ornate entrance door was quite a sight to behold.

There was a big plaza area in front of the cathedral and on one side was this beautiful bronze sculpture, while on all the other sides, there were many restaurants.

My restaurant, suggested by theFork, was right across the cathedral, and I had the good fortune to gaze onto the cathedral for the next two hours, because as it happened, the restaurant only served food after 7:30 PM which meant I just had to sit and relax for an hour.

It was not too difficult to sit around. The bartender found a really good, locally made, sparkling, sweet white wine for me.

This was quite a relaxing evening with good food and reading about the total solar eclipse, which was happening right around that time, but I had no desire to seek it out.