Walked today: 8.9 miles
Walked Camino 2019: 203.1 miles
The walk to Carrión was very similar to yesterday’s.
We got to Carrion de los Condes at 8:30 and stopped for breakfast.
A festival was underway and the streets were full of revellers, mostly late teens and twenty somethings.
After breakfast, we caught a ride to the next village of Calzadilla de la Cueza. Between the two locations is a stretch of 11 miles of straight, path through grain fields with no place to eat, rest, or spend the night. We struggled along this section in 2014 and 2017 but decided to skip it today.
Our driver dropped us off at a few minutes after nine
and we continued on the path that mostly paralleled a two lane road for some three miles to Ledigos (pop. 74), where we stopped for a brief break
and continued on to Terradillos de los Templarios, our destination for the day.
Terradillos de los Templarios was once home to a 13th-century church belonging to the Knights Templar, but is one of the few pilgrimage towns that never had a pilgrim refuge until modern times.  Iglesia de San Pedro contains a Gothic crucifix but is rarely open. The church is built of brick rather than stone, as this area has very little local stone. Set aside from the N-120 highway, Terradillos has a peaceful sleepy town feel.
The Knights Templar were a medieval military order responsible for protecting pilgrims. While the order was popular and successful for almost 200 years, grand master Jacques de Molay was arrested in 1307 (on Friday the 13th, possibly the origin of this superstitious date) and burned at the stake for heresy and a variety of trumped-up charges. The order was disbanded in disgrace, though many think the charges had more to do with politics than any actual wrongdoing.
We checked in to Albergue los Templarios as soon as we arrived and arranged for machine washing our clothing, then spent the rest of the afternoon, Linda reading and Jim chatting with two bike riding peregrinos from Belgium, Chris and Fred. By dinner time they had learned a lot about the different cultures of their respective countries and become new friends. Jim also chatted a while with a French couple who arrived at the albergue the same time as we.
We stayed at this albergue in 2017 and consider it one of our favorites. The owners opened up a new albergue in late 2017 several days down the path, so we made a reservation today to stay there too on the 27th.
We had a tasty lunch and dinner at the albergue today and retired for the day around 9 p.m.
Jimandi 