Day 33 – Reliegos to León

Walked today: 7.8 miles

Walked Camino 2019: 239.1 miles

The path out of Reliegos reminded us of yesterday.

Just before Manzilla de las Mulas we stopped at a favorite albergue/bar for breakfast.

Manzilla was once a Roman town, likely a stopping point on the Via Trajana. The city was fortified with walls in the 12th century and rebuilt in the subsequent two centuries. Today, more than half of the medieval walls remain, some as tall as 14m and as thick as 3m. It is possible to climb the stairway up into the rounded towers, and two of the original gates still stand.

As we left Manzilla the path changed to a much wider dirt road which fronted a secondary road toward León.

We soon lost our shade and got closer to the road until we finally were actually sharing the road with cars and trucks, some really big trucks.

After a brief break, walking through the woods, we crossed the Río Porma on a modern footbridge

adjacent to the Puente de Villarente, a bridge originally built by the Romans, and entered the town of Villarente (pop. 342).

In 2014 we spent the night here, in Albergue San Pelayo, and took a taxi to the other side of León to Virgen del Camino the next morning, then walked back into the city, then returned to Virgen del Camino to spend the night. In 2017 we walked into León, spent the night in Leon, then walked on through the city and spent the night in Virgin del Camino.

Today we split the difference, we took a taxi from here into León to Hostal San Martin (58€).

Our hotel is very centrally located just a few steps from the Catedral and other León landmarks.

We took a few photos, bought Jim some new walking shorts

and a haircut.

We spent a frustrating few minutes at the Orange mobile phone store trying to extend the time on our prepaid sim cards. We’ve still got service, but for how long is still not clear. Orange (a French company) seems to be trying to establish themselves in Spain by not speaking English or French and sending confusing text messages to prepaid sim card users as if they were regular customers. Their websites and texts are at best, confusing. We’ll struggle along with them until they shut us down again, to avoid paying the very unreasonably high Verizon international options, but next time we’ll definitely go with Movistar.

Here are some photos of León today.

Royal Collegiate Church of San Isidoro

After finally getting a light supper at 6 when no one offers a meal until after 8, we made up for it by overendulging in the Valor chocolate store…

… then returned to our room to sleep it off, or walk it off tomorrow morning,