San Domingo to Belarado

A wet drizzly start and having waited for stragglers I was then slow out of the blocks. I was quickly behind the rest of the gang and struggling. Mentally I envisage myself as Alec Guinness in Bridge over the River Kwai as he shakes off assistance and hobbles/ marches the short distance from his solitary imprisonment to his barracks. This leads to me whistling colonel bogey which picks my speed up a bit. But I have to take another ibuprofen to really get to any decent walking speed.

Malta drops back to boost the local butterfly population* and we walk together, in fact for most of the day.
* Apparently there are more butterflies along the camino than elsewhere in Spain and this is thought to be because of pilgrims, as our American cousins would say, going to the bathroom, so boosting the local butterfly population becomes a useful euphemism.

As we leave Granon -the first village of the day- we get a view over a wide valley of fields. It takes me some time to appreciate what is strange here- we have left Rioja and there are no more vineyards: there will be no free grapes today. We do later find a fig tree and get some free pickings from this!

As on other days, the sun does make a belated appearance and evoke pace a mood lifts. The villages have changed (less dressed stone, more bricks, plaster, timber and tiles), the churches too reflect this architecturally and have squat square towers rather than elaborate domed belfries, and the bread has changed to something like a crusty stottie cake.

We reach Belorado, a town with a lively town square and two attractive churches (the first that one meets a good deal more handsome than the main parish church in the square. The priest here to, has a warmth and humour that transcends the language barrier. He gives a beautifully crafted teaching and blessing of pilgrims after mass. The hostel, too, is very hospitable and does big community meals. The proprietress spent three years in Durham and one in Newcastle, and she and her husband take an obvious pride in the service they provide.