June 26th Leon
Already 8:00 in the morning and D and H are still sleeping. That’s the thing when you stay in a hotel instead of an albergue you always get a late start. It is usually good for us though because it will be warmer for Deb. Today Hayden will walk with us for the first half of the day, then he will go to the left through the countryside on one Camino and we will go right along the senda for the other Camino. Several of the next legs of the Camino will be along roads which work well for us. Tonight Hayden will be in one town, we will be in another, but tomorrow we will meet again in Hospital del Camino. Then split again on two Caminos to meet the next night in Astorga. I really enjoy it when he is with us and I hope we don’t intrude on his Camino.
In an albergue in Villadangos del Paramo, the municipal albergue, 5€ apiece. Hayden saw one of his friends, Marianna drinking coffee in front of the cathedral in Leon as we were walking out of the city. He stopped to have a cup while we walked on, he is so fast he would catch us pretty easily. Well we walked on for a couple of hours and he never caught us.
We stopped at the San Froilan church in La Virgin Del Camino and visited there before we went across the street to the La Perigrino café for something to drink and a charge of her chair. Deb had tapas again and we tried all four different ones. She likes almost all of them, maybe not the calamari as much. These were some meat in a red sauce, no idea what kind of meat though. It looked like tripe to me, tripe and cartilage, but she liked it.
Well Hayden had stopped about a km before he got to where we were and had a drink with some people he was walking with. We were where the road splits for him to go to Villar de Mazarife, and us to Villadangos Del Paramo. We were done charging and out on the road right as he walked up with Marianna and a German guy. The German was walking the country part and Hayden and Marianna decided to walk the road with us. We had already walked about 9 or 10 km before he caught us.
We walked to Valverde in 3.4 km, there was nothing there. We walked on to San Miguel and stopped at a bar to charge. Hayden and Marianna were on the path behind us as we were walking the road. The bartender spoke no English but was showing me in the paper all about USA playing Alaman (Germany) tonight in Futball. After we paid he asked me if we had any American dollars, I did and he gave me a € for one. Then they were passing it around the bar to all the older guys playing dominoes and cards to see.
As we were walking earlier the Australians had passed us and were not happy, apparently the book had said there was an Albergue in the town we just passed and that was where they had planned to stay tonight. The albergue had closed two years ago. They had to walk on to Villadangos. We were fine, we had already planned to stay there. That is what is hard, you have your mind set that you are almost done and you have to walk another 9 km.
About that time Hayden and Marianna came into the bar and she looked a little rough. The heat was getting to her and she was out of water. We gave her some of ours and took her backpack on Deb’s trailer to give her a break. She was so sweet about not letting us, but Deb insisted. I explained to her the story of the Venezuelan fellows who had helped us get Deb’s trailer up the hill into Valcarlos. We walked the next 8 km in the sun into Villadangos and stopped at another bar for another drink and waited for H and M to show up. When they got there we had another drink and headed for the albergue. The guy running the bar said less than a km. awesome.
Apparently his idea of 1km and mine are different, so 2 km later we make it to the albergue and it has ramps up to a step. No problem use the ramp we are in. They get us a 4 bed room with a German guy in it who moves to another room so we could have the whole thing. Everybody works with you on the Camino.
Falling asleep writing this; will write more tomorrow.