Jimandi

• Distance today:                     8.3 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:   263.5 mi

We left Terradillos de los Templarios at 7:45… our latest start so far.

The weather has been so cool (55F when we got up) it hasn’t been necessary to start in the dark. We walked only 2.5 miles before stopping for breakfast at Moratinos.

This area has been producing wine for over 2000 years in the surrounding fields and digging caves or “bodegas” into the clay hillsides for producing and storing the wine for their families. Only two or three families in this village of 68 people still use the bodegas to make wine and we saw only a few scattered vineyards as we approached the village.

Moratinos is also a village that may once have been Muslim or had a significant Muslim population. Many moriscos (Muslims who converted to Catholicism) settled as farmers in the flat areas of Castilla, only to be removed in 1609.

There wasn’t much to see in the 16th-century  Iglesia Parroquial de San Tomás, but the roofed porch would provide a shady spot for pilgrims as would the trees in the small square adjacent to the church.

We walked another 1.5 miles and stopped for fresh squeezed orange juice in the village of San Nicólas del Real Camino (pop.48), a village that was under Templar control until the late 12th century.

We got down to some serious walking for the next 4 miles to reach Sahagún. (pronounced “SA GOON” with accent on last syllable.)

Just before arriving at Sahagún, we crossed over a medieval bridge and made a brief visit to the Ermita Virgen del Puente, built in the Sahagún historic Romanesque-Mudéjar architectural style, which incorporated Islamic decorative motifs and was built primarily out of brick rather than stone. It was built in the 12th century and underwent some renovations in 2011. Also at the site was the geographic halfway marker for the Camino Frances, if you start in Spain as opposed to SJPDP.

We continued on into Sahagún, found our hotel, La Codorniz (45€), checked and did our daily pilgrim chores.

When our growling stomachs announced it was time to eat, we ventured out into the town and found an albergue near many of the historical buildings of the town and had a tortilla lunch.

On our way back to the hotel, we took some photos of some of the key historical sites. Sahagún (pop.2830) dates back to Roman times, however the current town developed from the worship of the remains of two Christian martyrs, St. Facundus and St. Primitivus, who’s beheaded bodies were thrown into the waters of the Rio Cea, recovered and placed in a tomb that became a primary sanctuary.  The original church was established in 872 and thereafter received the favor of princes and nobles alike, its golden age culminating during the reign and patronage of Alfonso VI.

Alfonso VI was responsible for opening up Spain to the rest of Europe, granting a charter to Sahagún and promoting the Camino Frances passing through the town.  Alfonso VI and his 4 wives are buried in the museum of the Monastery of San Benito.

We stopped at a sweets shop on the way back to our hotel, then ventured out around 6:30 for pasta at one of the few bars serving food, then returned to our room for the evening.

• Distance today:                       5.4 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:     255.3 mi

We slept in this morning leaving Calzadilla de la Cueza at 7:30. We walked nearly 4 miles before stopping at 9:00 in the village of Ledigos (pop.74) for breakfast.

We’ve missed seeing the beautiful fields of sunflowers (“girasoles”) with their bright yellow blooms along the way. They peaked in early to mid-August and the fields are kinda drab. But alas, this morning we passed several late blooming fields with a few scatterered, near-peak plants.

Hopefully we’ll see more along the way.

At around 10:00, we stopped at Albergue Los Templarios, our home for the day, at the edge of Terradillos de los Templarios (pop.78) once home to a 13th-century church belonging to the Knights Templar.

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.

The Knights Templar was a Catholic military order recognised in 1139 by pope innocent II’s papal bull Omne Datum Optimum of the Holy See. The order was founded in 1119 and active from about 1129 to 1312. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.

Although the primary mission of the order was militaristic, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: Pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value. This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.

Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world’s first multinational corporation.

The order, which was among the wealthiest and most powerful, became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. They were prominent in Christian finance. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.

The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded.

King Philip IV of France was heavily in debt and had borrowed huge sums of money from the Knights Templar and he had no intention of paying them back. He used the Knights Templar loss of support to his advantage by colluding with Pope Clement V, a relative who was heavily influenced by Philip.  Since the papacy was at that time located in Avignon, France, Philip convinced Clement to bring charges against the Knights Templar and disband the order and arrest them, charging them with heresy during the Inquisition.

The order was disbanded by the Pope in 1308 and Jacques de Moray, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and 70 other Templar leaders were arrested on October 13, 1307 and were tortured into confessions.

Even though De Moray, age 71, recanted his tortured confessions, he was burned at the stake in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral on March 18, 1314 after 7 years of solitary confinement and torture.

While burning on the pyre, De Molay cursed King Philip IV of France, his descendants, Pope Clement V, and everyone else who supported his death. De Molay said that within a year and a day, Clement V and Philip IV would die. He also said Philip’s bloodline would reign in France no more

It happened as De Molay wished for, and death came for Clement first. He lost a battle with a damaging disease on April 20, 1314 at age 54. Shortly after the Pope, Philip died of a stroke while hunting at age 46. A tragic death was also the destiny for all of Philip’s successors. Between 1314 and 1328 all three sons and grandsons of the French king died. Within fourteen years from the death of De Molay the House of Caped no longer existed – after it had stood for 300 years.

In September 2001, a document known as the “Chinon Parchment” dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312,[57] as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were “restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church”.

The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement’s relative.

Albergue Los Templarios (opened in 2007) is the nicest albergue we’ve stayed in, so far. It has bunk bed rooms (literas-8€) and single bed rooms (camas) with private or shared bathrooms. Grassy areas surround the albergue and there are clotheslines aplenty. After machine washing our clothes, the owner gave us an extra handful of clothespins. (Clothespins are always in short supply when hanging out your clothes to dry!) Los Templarios has an all day open bar and pilgrim menus for lunch (1:30-3:00) and dinner (6:30- 8:00 ).

Our habitacion con bano (38€) is bright, spacious with two comfortable twin beds, an adequate sized bathroom with complementary soap! Even though it was too early to check in, the owner gave us a room anyway and within a half hour we had showers and our dirty clothes were being machine washed (4€).

Note the orange towels, which surely must indicate there are Clemson fans in the area!

We had lunch in the albergue cafeteria including wine for 12€ and a nice pilgrim dinner for 10€ each.

• Distance today:                           10.7 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:          249.9 mi

Yippeee! We’re halfway to Santiago!

In a lot of ways, today’s walk was like yesterday’s. It was what we consider a long walk (>16km or 10 miles). The path was mostly flat with only gentle ups and downs. The weather was perfect: temperature in 50-60 range, slight breeze behind us, no precipitation.

Even though today we walked a mile less than yesterday, what made today more difficult was: the first 3.5 miles were paved rather than dirt, there were no villages or bars or restrooms for the entire 10.6 miles and it occurred a day after walking nearly twelve miles.

Nevertheless, it was on balance, a good day, a satisfying day for both of us.

Unlike most of our walks, there’s not a lot to share about our day.

In summary, we left Carrión at 6:45 in the dark and walked for the first 3.5 miles on a very
straight Roman road that had been restored by paving it with asphalt.

The next 7 miles were also on a straight Roman road that had been covered with a mixture of gravel and dirt and packed down by farm equipment and pilgrims for many years.

We arrived in Calzadilla de la Cueza (pop. 54) at 10:45 and were allowed to check-in to our room at the Camino Real hostel (40€) right away and did so as soon as we ate a late breakfast.

This small village of 54 inhabitants has a church but it was locked. Main Street is at best 100 yards long with a few crossing streets with maybe 4-5 houses deep. Other than 2  albergues, our hotel, and a tiny grocery store (which was also closed) there isn’t anything else here but houses and buildings housing farm equipment.

Because of lack of stone, most of the houses are made of brick and stucco. The bricks appear to be very crude but have been around for a long time. You can see the straw mixed in with the clay and several houses have very old brick that has been maintained and retained with newer brick add-ons.

After a pizza dinner we took a walk and found the 16th century church, Iglesia de San Martin, open and an 87 year old, lifetime resident took us on a tour.  We understood a little of what she said, enough to keep her from being as frustrated as we. Several of the wood icons in the church were from the 13th century and her describing them to us made it extra special.  She wouldn’t let us take her photo because she wasn’t dressed up for it. It created another wonderful memory for Camino 2017.

• Distance today:                      11.8 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:      239.2mi

Today almost all of our walk was on a gravel/dirt path parallel to a two lane, lightly traveled highway.

We walked through the villages of Población de Campo (pop. 140):

Revenga de Campos (pop.179):

Villarmentero de Campos (pop. 11)):

and Villalcazar de Sirga (pop.174):

They were all spaced 2-3 miles apart and few if any services were available in each village. It usually took less than 5 minutes to pass through each village. In between the villages were flat, fields as far as you could see in all directions.

This is the meseta. Many guidebooks and other writings describe the meseta as dull, monotonous, repetitive, bleak, hot, cold, uninteresting, etc. We’ve known many pilgrims who skip it altogether by taking a bus.  Many walk to Burgos and stop. Others begin in Leon and walk to Santiago.

We love the meseta. The endless fields and frontier-like villages scattered along the Way, because of their simplicity, are actually soothing, proving time for reflective thinking or non-thinking (meditation) while you walk without distraction or stimulus, other than the breeze, the sun, the sky, the endless fields and what you are feeling physically and/emotionally.

Today was a great day. We felt good both during and after what was our longest and fastest walk so far…averaging 3 miles an hour for almost 12 miles!

We walked straight to our Hotel Santiago in Carrión de Los Condes (pop.2221) and were warmly received by the owner who happens to be the grandson of the owner of the hotel we stayed in two nights ago.

Our habitacion con bano (40€) is one of the nicest, spacious we have occupied so far.

After completing our chores we had lunch at a nice restaurant a few blocks away. We had two delicious meals and will definitely snack for dinner.

Tonight we attended a mass at the Iglesia de Santa María del Camino for Peregrinos, which we attended passively as it was all in Spanish and we didn’t recognize any of the songs, ritual or responsive readings. At the end of the service the 50-60 pilgrims attending came down to the front of the church to be recognized by country (we were the only Americans). The priest gave a personal blessing to each of us. Also we were each presented a handmade star to carry with us, representing the blessing for a good Camino and a good life afterwards.

 

• Distance today:                        8.9 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:     227.4 mi

The first 5 miles this morning from Itero de la Vega to Boadilla del Camino was an uneventful walk on a dirt path surrounded by fields of recently cut wheat and an occasional smaller field of unrecognized green leafy plants and some field corn (not to eat).

Two pilgrims walked about 500 yards ahead us most of the way with no other pilgrims in sight.

We stopped for breakfast in Boadilla at an albergue and again, the only person besides us was the owner.

Just outside of Boadilla del Camino the path was lined with tall trees, providing shade to go along with a light breeze and low 60’s temperature… perfect for walking.

A mile later the path made a sharp right turn and soon after we began walking along the Canal de Castilla for the remainder of the morning into Frómista.

We zig-zagged through town and at 11:20 found (uniquely named), Hotel Camino de Santiago(48€), a very nice “Top Rural” hotel.

The hotel didn’t open until 1:30, but we rang the doorbell anyway and the owner acknowledged our reservation and hustled us up to our room, indicating we could do the checkin later.

By 1:00 we had settled in and completed our routine tasks, so we ventured out into the neighborhood to scout out anything we wanted to see later, had lunch and returned shortly after 2 to check-in.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to reading and naps (Jim procrastinated on the blog) and visiting a church or two and making sure we knew the way from our hotel back to the Camino for tomorrow morning.

Iglesia de San Pedro

Iglesia de San Martín

A thunderstorm threatened our normal plans for supper at a nearby restaurant, so we grabbed sandwiches and returned to the hotel and had dinner in our parlor.  We’ve only seen one other occupant in our hotel, a couple from Ireland who is doing the Camino a week at a time, starting this time in Burgos and going as far as they can by Friday.

Tomorrow will be a long one, so we got to bed early.

 

• Distance today:                      6.6 mi
• Distance Camino 2017:    218.5 mi

Day was just breaking as we left Meson de Castrojeriz at 7:15 and walked the remaining 0.7 mile through the town. We crossed the main road and onto a Roman road.

Looking back at Castrojeriz, the emerging sun silhouetted the strategically placed town and San Esteban Castillo, and in mere minutes evolved into a magnificently blazing sky.

The road continued as we looked apprehensively at the imposing mountain in front of us and the barely visible pathway that worked its way up to the pinnacle .

The 2000 year old road became a Roman causeway made from thousands of tons of stone brought here by the Romans to cross a swampy area with their chariots and wagons, transporting gold and other minerals over 2000 years ago. The remains of Roman mines could also be seen to the right as well as a seam of mica running up the hill.

The path then climbed steeply up a 12% grade over 500 ft to the Alto de Mostelares. At the top we paused a few minutes to catch our breath in a small shelter created for shade. 

We walked on the flat mountain top, viewing other mesas around us for a few hundred yards then plunged downhill another 500 ft over a path that had been paved in cement and reached a grade of 18%! The going down was about as slow as the climbing up.

At the bottom, the path became dirt/gravel again and continued through shadeless wheat fields. We paused a few minutes more after 4.5 miles into our walk at Fuente al Pioja (flea’s fountain) where local fellows regularly offer coffee, fruit and other snacks along a shady picnic area. A natural spring offers untreated water, though locals say it is safe to drink. No locals were there this morning and we didn’t want to test the water and we’re no fan of fleas, so we moved on and joined a paved road for a few minutes then followed the Camino marker onto a dirt path that took us past San Nicolás Chapel.

The friendly San Nicolás chapel, a 13th century church restored and run by an Italian Confraternity, is a primitive albergue with communal meals and no electricity and practices footwashing for pilgrims that stay overnight.

After San Nicolás we crossed over the Río Pisuerga on a paved bridge and passed the welcome sign to Palencia (river is the border between Burgos and Palencia provinces). A pilgrim bridge was first commissioned here in the 11th century by Alfonso VI to unify the territories of Castile and León.

We walked along the river for just under a mile before entering Itero de la Vega (pop. 177), our destination for the day.

Albergue Puente de Fitero (40€) has a bar and pilgrim type meals so it’s a very convenient stop. We have a habitacion con bano which is comfortable, clean and has plenty of space to put our stuff.

Our room overlooks the Camino and a large patio with plenty of seating, so if we choose, we can watch Pilgrim’s stop for a rest and then walk on, as most do. The albergue also has plenty of

closeslines and clothespins for drying clothes and a washing machine and dryer, if needed.

We almost have the albergue to ourselves today, perhaps because many pilgrims are in a hurry to get to Santiago before summer’s end and Itero is not a typical stopping point.

Arriving this morning at 10:30 and being able to check in immediately after a late breakfast has given us plenty of time to complete our routine chores, rest, shop for bottled water and snacks and relax.

One valuable aspect of the Camino is the time it allows for reflection. Today we were apprehensive about crossing the mountain. Once we began climbing, it didn’t help to have 20-30 something pilgrims pass us one by one on the way up. But we put one foot in front of the other, trying to avoid negative thoughts, being thankful that we are here and able to take on this and other Camino challenges and pausing to both catch our breath, rest our legs and knees and look back and around us to register and revel in our progress. When we reached the top and also when we reached the bottom, the satisfaction was priceless and gave us renewed strength and courage to continue this wonderful journey.