Wednesday & Thursday: Rain

There was a fantastic rainbow over the church as we walked back from Breakfast in Boadilla. Unfortunately it was the rain and not the sun that prevailed, and does so in fact for the next two days.

The walk to Fromista was a gentle one along a canal. There we had "the worst coffee on the Camino". The rest of the walk was along the side of a road and the rain and wind became vicious. We we stopped for a hearty and protracted lunch in a town dominated by the huge bulk of San Maria la Blanca, which sadly was shut.

The walk on was dreary. Nico said later how glad he was to have run into us and to have company for what would otherwise have been a very dull, and wet couple of days. He's a big hit with everyone in the group, sharing stories of travels, and jokes, and tending to our wounds.

We arrive in Carrion de Los Condes* where the main hostels are run by religious sisters. Nico's guide book guides us as to which nuns to head for: we avoid the Poor Clares and the youngish sisters who run the parish hostel and head instead for the diminutive (there seems to be a 5ft height limit) sisters who run the Spirito Santo hostel. The rooms are quite large, but again beds rather than bunks and the sisters scurry around making sure that radiators are on so that we can dry all that got wet. All of us were disappointed by the performance of various bits of our equipment in the rain. My Gortex Timberland boots seemed to allow water ingress as quickly as any regulation shoe, and from the toe, not from the top. Expensive Gortex Jackets were similarly leaky, and backpacks too. On this last score we collect plastic bags from Dia supermarket: all that expense and ultimately we keep our things dry with free plastic bags!

I go to mass and leave Malte, John and Constanze to cook. (I've typically taken control of the kitchen too many times so it's time for me to stand back.) They cook a lovely cheese pasta and salad and we have a happy dinner.

* The other strange/ disturbing thing about this town is that the central square is named Plaza de Generalissimo Franco.

Thursday:
The walk from Carrion is described as as study in monotony. There is 17km before the first town with a bar along a straight road through fields that seem from a distance to be ploughed earth but on closer inspection turn out to be filled with nothing but stones. It rains again pretty steadily. The bar, when we hit it, is full of familiar faces and we settle in for a longer than normal break eating bocadillos.

After a while I start to feel nauseous and head for the bathroom. Fortunately this visit is enough to put me right: my temperature returns to normal, and with some fresh air and water, I am okay again. But before we depart John feels unwell too. He tells us to go on ahead and he'll catch us up. He does eventually catch us in the next town, but he is struggling (and John is a big athlete).

When we arrive in Terradillos Los Templarios we had already discovered that the Templar hostel was closed for the off-season and so all pilgrim piled into one cramped hostel, with steamed up windows and rooms. Constant rain stopped anyone venturing very far and we were content to accept reports that there was precious little to see, and no other place/ restaurant/ shop to go to.

We ate in where the conversation was considerably better than the food, except for John, whose illness turned out to be a bad dose of gastro-enteritis. He was badly sick, and it was not certain whether he could walk tomorrow.