Distance travelled: 26.6 kilometers

We had a daunting morning ahead of us as we left Carrión de los Condes. As I mentioned yesterday, the next town was over 16 kilometers away, and by that I mean there is literally nothing between the two towns. It is 16 kilometers of tree-lined path through fields, with no toilets or [legal] places to stop for a drink or snack. (Keep in mind that 16 kilometers is further than the total distance I’ve walked on certain days up to this point.) This is what it looked like, the whole way:

Fortunately, I had Adam with me, and we found plenty of ways to laugh to pass the time. I finally had my first experience of using “el baño de los árboles”, i.e. peeing behind a tree, and I found that it was not as horrible as expected. 🙂 I was very, very glad to reach the end of that stretch, though.

We stopped for lunch at that cafe and then carried on.

Now, the next 24 hours would prove to be very strange for me and Adam.

It began as we exited this little hamlet and found ourselves entirely alone on the Camino.

There had been no shortage of people either ahead of or behind us. At least 100 pilgrims should have been in the process of making their way from this hamlet to the next town where people were likely to stay the night.

We realized pretty quickly that we were alone and kept commenting on it. It literally seemed as though an alien spacecraft had descended and abducted everyone. We couldn’t figure out where they’d all gone! For the next six kilometers, we saw only one other pilgrim. And when we arrived in Ledigos, the town where we assumed people had stopped, we encountered almost no one. The town was eerily silent and still; only a brief encounter with the British woman I’d met several days before offered any signs of life.

We decided to press on to Terradillos de los Templarios, which is another little hamlet made up of essentially two albergues and a church. According to my guide, Terradillos dates to the late Roman period and was controlled by the Templar Knights in the 13th century. “The village also harbors a mystery: this is the place the last Templar Knights hid the fabled hen that lay golden eggs and was a source of their wealth.” [shrug] I didn’t see or hear anything more about this, but it was interesting to find a connection to the Templar Knights…

Our albergue had a pleasant lawn, and when Adam and I arrived, we saw Mark sitting in front of the building. Adam and I were put in a four-person room with a Spanish woman neither of us had seen or met before; we exchanged only brief greetings upon our arrival before she disappeared.

We took care of our laundry and then settled down for a beer on the lawn. It was a pretty good way to pass the time until dinner, which we ate with Mark.

We also got a nice sunset:

Tomorrow’s post will relay the very strange events of the coming evening at this albergue… stay tuned.