Day: June 16, 2026

Day 21 – Villarmentero de Campos to Villalcazár de Sirga

Walked today: 4 mi. Camino’26: 141 mi.

After yesterday’s longer than planned walk, it shortened today’s walk considerably.

The door was open on this building as we walked out of Villamentero, revealing these local livestock.

The section of Camino from Frómista to Carion de los Contes has very few trees to provide pilgrims with shade. This tree was shading a small community park. There were no other trees along the path for the entire walk.

Leaving Villamentero and the only tree on our walk.
This was the typical path to Villalcázar de Sirga. The huge Iglesia de Santa María la Blanca can be seen in upper right corner, some 3 miles ahead.
The combination of high bank on our right and a still low rising sun created some shade for us part of the way. Are trees overrated?
Jim’s technique for managing long walks and seemingly monotonous scenery is to make trivial observations with little or no value to others and perhaps himself. He snapped several dozen photos of the shadows walking beside us and selected this one as the winning entry for your consideration.
The village of Villalcázar de Sirga (pop.174) revealing itself and its dominant church.
The main entrance to the village.

With the unmatched timing of our 8:34 a.m. arrival time and the 2:00 p.m. checkin time, we creatively went about finding ways to occupy potentially 5.5 hours of waiting.

We first found a table and chairs on the terrace adjacent to the only open bar in the village and ordered breakfast.

Knowing this to be a collecting point for pilgrims, mostly just passing through, we enjoyed interesting conversations with (1) a retired USNavy officer originally from Colorado Springs and currently living in Sardinia (2) A group of 20-something Chinese citizens who spoke excellent English and sought information about the Camino ahead (3) young couple from Australia (4) An older, but younger than us gentleman from New Zealand, just to mention a few.

When a gap in pilgrim traffic occurred, we took a short walk backwards out of the village to see where yesterday’s alternate route would have taken us, had we stayed on it to the end.

The alternate route along the river from Poblacíon de Campos to Villalcázar de Sirga leaving the fields and joining a road into the village.
This is the largest Rosemary “bush” we have ever encountered.
Two huge birch trees in a small park commemorating the 1999 Anno Santa (Camino Holy Year).
Nice informative sign of places to stay in Villalcázar.

Before leaving for our exploratory walk, Jim sent a WhatsApp message to the innkeeper of Don Camino, our accommodation for today, asking if we could get access to our room before the 2:00 standard checkin. We got a message from her saying our room was ready and although the Albergue wouldn’t open until 2:00, she would meet us at the front door in 5 minutes with the key to our room. We were ecstatic and grabbed our stuff and walked to the albergue.

The Jardin of Don Camino
A nice common area in the private room with bath section of the albergue.
Our room in Don Camino. The property is in a very old structure and the decor is early 20th century. It’s clean and charming in a what-was-it-like 100 years ago manner. The original hard wood floors in our room were noticeably not level after decades of wear and settling.
The apparent un-level floors under our room door.

Miraculously, our backpacks were waiting for us, validating that we were definitely back on the original transport itinerary.

We did our chores and otherwise settled in until our tummies signaled it was time for lunch. The Don Camino bar and restaurant was not open at 2:30, so we walked back to our breakfast bar and ordered our meal for the day.

On the way to lunch Linda stopped to take a sip of this pilgrim’s drink, while he was busy posing for the photo.
The main attraction of the village is Iglesia Santa María la Blanca. Door was locked but will open later today.

We’ve visited this 13th century church on multiple occasions and decided to skip the visit today. Since the 13th-century, many miracles of curing individual maladies have been attributed to the Virgin Blanca (White Virgin). She was believed to protect and cure pilgrims that passed through the area over the years, adding to the importance she brought to the Camino Frances.

We finally checked in at 4:30, as the bar was finally open. We also asked the innkeeper to call a taxi to meet us tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. outside the bar to take us to Calzadilla de la Cueza to continue our walk.

Sorry about the omitted photos from yesterday’s post. Weak, unreliable WiFi is not a chronic problem on the Camino, but it does interfere with getting the posts out occasionally. To see the photos for yesterday, find a calendar on any post and click on June 15 to take you a version with the photos.

Buen Camino!