Distance traveled: 27.6 km 

I think this day had the best sunrise of the entire Camino, which is really saying something. It’s the first one that comes to mind when I think about Camino sunrises. Perhaps you can see why?

Within an hour of leaving Grañón, we crossed out of La Rioja and into the region of Castilla y León, which is by far the largest of the four that the Camino Francés passes through. (This is day 12; I won’t leave Castilla y León until day 30!) The sign below plots out all of the stops on the Camino through Castilla y León. As you can see… there are many!

One of the things I immediately appreciated about Castilla y León was the regular signage. While the path had been perfectly clear through Navarra and La Rioja as well, the signs in Castilla y León were far more regular, and they had the added benefit of giving you a constant reminder of your progress toward Santiago. I think the one below is the first we passed, and all of the ones in Castilla y León look like this – just with steadily decreasing numbers of kilometers left!

There’s not a ton for me to say about this particular day, despite the fact that I can actually recall quite a few distinct portions of the walk. I ended up walking apart from the group for part of the morning – we all were just going at different paces – and I decided that I’d try putting my hiking boots back on, just to see how they felt. Well, friends, I had my boots on for all of five minutes before taking them off again. They just felt horrible on my feet, even beyond the places where I still had healing blisters. I knew with certainty that I wouldn’t be wearing them again and that I’d try to find a pair of sneakers or something once I got to Burgos in a few days so I wouldn’t end up going the rest of the way in Tevas.

Our walk after lunch was really pleasant, and I don’t know why I don’t have more pictures of it. There was a point when I was strongly reminded of Virginia, for no reason I could articulate – but I found it very comforting. We passed through a few small towns and then walked through a rolling landscape until finally arriving at Villafranca.

I think just about everyone stays in the same place in Villafranca; it’s home to a large structure that’s half hotel and half albergue. I think my room that night might win the prize for the greatest number of pilgrims sleeping in one space, if you consider that in Roncesvalles there were at least dividers between bunk groups. I think in Villafranca there were about 30 people in my dorm room. Fortunately, the beds weren’t super close together, so we all had the space we needed to move around.

At one point before dinner when many of us were just journaling or tending to injuries, I heard a French woman attempting to communicate something to someone who spoke English, so I waved to her and let her know that I spoke French and was happy to translate. A few minutes later, the business concluded, she turned to me and asked “where are you from?” When I explained that I was originally from the US, she exclaimed “and you speak French like THAT?!” It really made my day!!!

This was another big gift I received from the Camino. Although I have a facility for languages, I struggled for most of the time I lived in France to feel truly comfortable and confident when I communicated in French. I felt hyperconscious of every little mistake or word missing from my vocabulary, despite the fact that I spoke French at work – in offering legal advice to clients – and regularly received praise for how well I speak French. I didn’t finally start to relax until the last six months or so of my residency in Paris. On the Camino, there are many French pilgrims, so I had plenty of opportunities to use French, and I found somehow that I had never spoken better French in my life. I don’t know if it was the result of really taking the pressure off by removing myself from Paris or what, but I started reporting back to French friends “my French is perfect on the Camino!” By the end of the journey, I’d decided that I could feel comfortable holding myself out as fluent in the language. That’s a designation I would never have dared to give myself previously – I’ve always imagined “fluent” to mean knowing 100% of the words and making almost no grammatical errors – but I realized that there was never a moment on the Camino when my French failed me from the perspective of either vocabulary or grammar, and the French pilgrims were happy to claim me as one of their own. It was the linguistic application of another Camino mantra: “my needs are few, and I have what I need.”

Anyway – we had a hearty meal that evening in the albergue’s above-average restaurant and with a pretty generous amount of red wine. The night passed more peacefully for some of us than others. I had the luck to be on one end of the room, away from a couple of Italian guys whose snoring nearly drove some members of my group to violence. I could hear them, but not enough to really keep me awake!

Because I happened to have this on my phone, here’s where I am at this point – the trail of stars will eventually lead all the way to the heart you see on the western side of the country; that’s Santiago.