Walked today:10.3 mi. Camino’26: 137mi.
Late yesterday afternoon, we received an email, in Spanish, from the owner of today’s destination in Población de Campos. She said that she had overbooked and did not have a room for us tonight. She apologized and said she was looking for another place for us to stay.
She explained that because of a family emergency she had been out of town and her substitute had made the booking error.
Rather than waiting to see when and what she might find for us, Jim opened the Booking. com app and searched for a new place for us to stay that would not severely alter our walking plans for today, which was 7.5 miles.
Fortunately he found a property and immediately booked it. Next, he located Eduardo, who was checking in other guests. He asked Eduardo for help with contacting the backpack transport company, as we knew our level of Spanish would make problem solving more difficult than it needed to be. So, Eduardo called his “friend” with the transport company and arranged for this morning’s pickup to take our packs to the new location and not the original one listed on our 45 location itinerary… and he also explained that the pick-up of our packs tomorrow morning needed to be at the new location and then taken to the next location on our original itinerary. Can you see why Jim sought E’s help in “fixing” the problem?
So, we had our fingers crossed as we began today’s walk, leaving our backpacks in the En El Camino pickup point and hoping we would see them again, particularly in today’s new destination.
Thankfully, today’s walk was on flat, easy-to-walk-on surfaces.
We walked up to the Casona Doña Petra at 11:30 a.m. after a 10 plus mile walk. The innkeeper was locking the front door and getting ready to leave when we told her we had a reservation and she immediately reversed course and checked us in.
We unlocked our room door and dropped, exhausted onto the inviting king bed, sweating wet and all.
A few minutes later we began getting acquainted with the room offerings and the common areas in the inn. Until two more guests checked in, an a hour or so later, we had the inn to ourselves.
Our backpacks hadn’t arrived yet so we did what chores we could without them. This included soaking our poor overworked feet in the too-cold-to-swim-water in the pool.
We decided to have a sandwich lunch since no other food option was available until dinner. The innkeeper/chef prepared us a triple-decker ham and cheese sandwich for lunch and served it to us on the terrace overlooking the pool.
We rested and blogged until about 2:00 when we became concerned about not yet having our backpacks. The air tags in each of our backpacks indicated our packs were still in Boadilla. We were in the process of contacting Eduardo when our packs were finally delivered at 2:20.
After a brief and quiet celebration (in the absence of additional guests, the innkeeper had fallen asleep on a common area sofa and could be heard snoring loudly throughout the inn) we took our packs to our room, successfully getting us back onto our original itinerary.
With all our stuff finally in one place, we proceeded to complete our chores for the remaining time before dinner.
Our dinner was fried chicken, mixed salad and fries. We were seated in the dining area with the other two guests. They were two ladies who knew each other and lived in Switzerland. One was formerly from Italy. the other from Hungary. They both spoke English and shared Camino experiences until retiring to our rooms for the evening.
Jimandi 