Thursday, August 21, 2008 Boadilla to Carrion

Carrion de Los Condes, Monasterio de Santa Clara

It's like this for miles.

It was another long, hot day on a treeless track.  The monotony of the landscape was broken occasionally by a small, brown adobe villages.  One small village which we passed through today had a small church that was open and a couple of children at the door who were tending admission.

Gone, but not forgotten.

After seeing the church and dropping a euro in the basket, we left, walking down through the plaza named after Franco.  We’d been told that his name is still  revered in some corners.  Like here, for instance.

Still, we arrived here in Carrion de Los Condes tired and happy. This small city is quite tourist friendly with lots of restaurants and stores that are open.  We ate supper with four Germans, fellow pilgrims in a German pub.  (I had a small salmon with a salad of paella, flan for dessert and a glass of vino tinto. It was the menu de peregrino and cost 8E.)  One of the Germans, Hartmut, was a priest who was traveling with Mathias, a social worker from his parish church.  It was good to talk at a leisurely pace with some fellow pilgrims.  Their English was good as well.

Carrion de Los Condes has two beautiful 13-15th c. churches.  The Church of Santiago is now a museum of church art, altars, etc.  We paid a euro for admission and it was well worth it.  The other church was still in use and simply beautiful.  As we walked around its interior, there was recorded music playing, chants and plain instrumentals.  It was much in keeping with the reverence of the church.  I could have stayed there longer.  There was an altar along the one transept that came from the Rhine region in Germany.  On it was a crucifix in the shape of an upward “Y.”  Hartmut later told us that there is another like it back in Puente La Reina.

We’ve met some interesting people on this trip.  Just so far there are two Italians who are sleeping next to me, a man and a wife.  There has been Natasha the young Slovakian woman, quite a few Germans and, of course, the Spaniards.  There has been also the girl from Australia, a man from Brazil we passed earlier today, a Dutch couple who were bicycling and Bart from Belgium. I still find it fascinating that the “lingua franca” of the Camino is English.

Monasterio de Santa Clara, where, it is said, St Francis overnighted on his pilgrimage.

The albergue we are in tonight is an old convent and monastery where, tradition says, St Francis himself stayed when he walked the Camino. It’s clean and well run, although the washing area is small and closed in, i.e., not open to the sun where things can dry more easily.

This daily washing of clothes is already routine.  The clothes don’t always dry out and handwashing gets them only so clean.  But you do what you can and hang the damp ones off your pack the next day.  It’s the way of the Camino.  Everybody does it and queues up for basins and drying lines on either side of standing in line for the showers. Life on the camino is life reduced to a few necessary tasks and a few necessary items.  It’s surprising what you get used to and how quickly you do so when there are no alternatives.