Carrion de los Condes to Terradilos de Templarios – HALF WAY point

Can’t go past recognising that we have completed 410km  and we are now officially half way to Santiago.  Funny how that was so easily written!

The San Zolio Real Monasterio which dates from the 11th century and where we stayed last night should be given one more airing in the blog.  It really is very special.  The restoration is amazing in that clearly the spaces and size of the structure have been all highlighted by the very sensitive conversion.  It houses the remains of the Counts of Carrion and St Francis of Assisi stayed here when he was on ‘the way’.  Amazing building that deserves its classification as a national monument of Spain.

Having previously waxed on about how the Meseta is not at all as we had expected, perhaps  we spoke too soon.  The Meseta is wonderful after the mountains, probably because you get a break from the climbing and the subsequent “downs” but after a while, it does get repetitive and I have found myself drifting away for ages.  They do say that the first 10 days of the Camino is about the body and the second 10 days is about the head and maybe that is true.  We are all saying that our experience is not at all like those described by those who travel it in July, August and September but nonetheless it is flat, it is a landscape of fields and there are few villages along the ways.

As we arrived in Terradilios de Templarios, I got the complete giggles.  For the life of me I feel like we are staying in Tammin (for the Western Australians who know Tammin, you will have an instant image  – you just need to place our Albergue about where the bowls club is coming in from the western side).  There is nothing much here, but the heating has come on in our rooms and for that we are eternally grateful.  Summer in Spain, this is not!  The two bottles of sunblock I bought I am seriously wondering about. I hope I am not tempting fate by writing that as walking in this temperature with a few 25km  and 29 km legs in front of us is quite nice.

The routine is pretty much set, but now we have an additional step – we arrive, Lori calls “order me a shandy” and I match her with a coffee.  Shower, telephone calls, emails, read, dinner, blog and bed.  Simple really.