It was a cool start this morning and it wasn’t long before we ran into a couple of hours worth of fog. We decided to skip having breakfast in the first town, assuming there would be something in the next town 2km down the road, but there wasn’t. Not was there anything in the next two towns. We ended up walking about 12km before finding anywhere that was open, and then we finally stopped for coffee and tortilla.
While sitting there we saw lots of the people who are becoming regulars in our days – the Koreans, the Australians, the Irish… As we were sitting there the fog lifted and the rest of the day became warm and sunny.
The next 12km there were no towns at all, and we were taken over the hills between here and today’s destination. Along the way the surroundings felt much like they did in the first days of this Camino – a lot more trees, more slopes, more green. We came across a memorial to a group that were killed during the Spanish civil war, and also some interesting logs that had been carved and painted to have faces.
After we got over the hills and out of the trees, we entered a small town called San Juan de Ortega. During our approach we could hear singing through a loudspeaker, and as we came into town we witnessed the end of a procession into the church. We stopped for a drink and a snack, and 5 minutes later it seemed that whatever was happening in the church was over, and half the population of the town was there having a drink with us!
Walking through the town afterwards the streets were full of people and there were multiple stalls selling food and toys and other knickknacks. It was like a town party!
It was just a short walk further to our destination of the day: Agés, a small wee town about 28km from where we began today. The person running our albergue said we had two options for dinner, the place on the corner that closes at 6, or the burger shop around the corner that opens at 7. The burgers were supposedly not your average burger, and even most of the reviews for the town on the Camino app were about the burgers rather than anything else in town, so we decided that was the way to go.
As we sat outside waiting for it to open, a couple of Spanish guys came to chat – mum had asked one of them earlier for a photo of his feet (!!) so I guess the ice had already been broken. So we were sitting there chatting and eventually a woman came and told us that they weren’t opening today… excellent. Luckily one of the other albergues offered food, so we went there to eat, still accompanied by our new Spanish friends. We had a pizza, which was surprisingly actually very nice, and sat and chatted while we ate. Poor mum couldn’t follow much of the conversation, but I enjoyed it!
emilyonearth 
Leave a comment