Day 11, Belorado to San Juan de Ortega

Despite having a population of only 20, St Juan de Ortega has this lovely old church with a very long history for pilgrims.

Thursday June 13

The hotel here at St Juan De Ortega (St Juan of the Nettles) advertises country wifi – only in the salon – by which I think they mean the foyer or dining room. Not that we’re doing any eating here. The owners also have the bar down the road and that’s where we had to check in and where our meals will be served.

By meals I mean dinner, they don’t do breakfast either, but tonight will give us a picnic lunch to take with us in the morning.

By country wifi, I’m not sure what they mean. I can see the network when I go downstairs, but can’t hook up to it. (As you see, I got online.) After typing everything in my room, I've gone downstairs. The Irish have all gone off to 6pm mass, so I'm alone until dinner.

There are only ten rooms in this hotel. Nine of them are taken by the Irish gang of 13 and I have to other one. But back to the start of the day.

Slept in for a start – woke with a jerk at 7.15am, so jumped up, had a shower, phoned home and packed before breakfast – cereal, yoghurt, watermelon and a toasted bread roll with some ham and cheese – as well as orange juice and coffee.

Hit the road about 8.30am, a bit later than usual. My arthritic toe was a bit creaky at first, but I’d taken 100mg of voltaren after breakfast. I’ve also been knocking back green mussel tablets, which are meant to be good for arthritis and calcium tablets (with magnesium and vitamin D), which must be good for something.

Whatever it was, after an hour or so I was feeling no pain. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to be walking pain free after a few dodgy days.

I noticed walking out of Belorado that they had all these brass plaques set in the footpath. They seemed to be footprints and handprints of celebrities. I've included a couple in the photo album - also some pics of murals, which there seemed to be a lot of coming out of town.  

I didn’t get into any conversations at all, so put on an audio book, which strangely enough was about pilgrims.

After just on 12km I arrived at Villafranca, which has been a pilgrim stop since the ninth century. It was only 11.15 and I was going to press on for another hour or so. Lucky I didn’t, as there wasn’t another stop all the way.

I talked with two of the Irish and for the first time learned some names. Mary-Jo and Helen confessed that they were staying where I was at the end of the day, and that’s how I found out it was just them (all 13 of them) and me.

I walked on up a mountain – the Montes de Oca, climbing to 1150m – not so bad, as we were already at 800m.

I got into conversation with a Japanese man – Shunya Mitsuya. We had a good conversation, considering neither of us spoke each other’s language.

What got us started is that we had identical green walking poles. He indicated that green was his favourite colour. He also had a green pack and so did I. Turned out we’d both bought our single poles at St Jean Pied de Port, choosing them because we liked the shade of green.

I’d been religiously putting the rubber bung on the end on paved surfaces, taking it off on rougher terrain. We’d both found that the rubber bung wore through, so we were both clicking along noisily on paved surfaces.

Somewhere on top of Montes de Oca there was a small stall selling coffee and a bit of food by donation. I got a small coffee and a chocolate thing and sat down next to a Therese, a woman from Lake Tahoe in California. She was mountainbiking the Camino, doing about 70km a day. We had a good conversation about her time in NZ many years ago when she worked in Queenstown, on something to do with the ski season.

After that I swung along very comfortably, blessing my pain-free feet and listening to my audio book.

I got to La Henera hotel and found another two Irish sitting outside. James, who I’d met the previous day and Anne-Marie, the fast walker who I’d assumed was his wife, but wasn’t. His wife is Margaret, who I haven’t yet picked out. I also later met Nora, who confessed to snoring, but her room is a long way from mine, so I should be ok.

I was mentally prepared to have no wifi, so avoided internal tantrums. Now I’ve written a report and downloaded the photos and will worry about them after tomorrow’s walk – 26km to Burgos, a city of 180,000, where I have a rest day on Saturday.

I’ve taken advantage of a bath (without a plug), a verandah, and a lot of wind and done most of my washing. Fingers crossed it dries and also that the Irish don’t make me too cross-eyed tonight.

I'm pleased to have got this online.
I hope I'll get the photos up too. They're in chronological order - sorry I haven't sprinkled them through  this blog.

Here's most of the photos - they didn't all load: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CqoYNt7B3MYTQG4P6

As yiu'll see from the photos - only 520km to go :-)