Terradillo de Templarios-El Burgo Ranero

(Festivity of Saint James)

To Santiago 379 Kms

(Distance 31 Kms  // Time walking 7 hours)

_{It was only a few minutes past six in the morning when we leave this oasis that Marisa Perez keeps in the middle of a moorland. We follow a dirt track towards Sahagun. The morning is very calm, dawn is breaking but the wind does not move a single piece of straw. We presage a very hot day. We do not see anybody in the Camino.}

_{A big car is stopped in the route a couple of kilometres before arriving at Sahagun. When we reach the car, we see how a man and a woman inside, both naked, greet the new day in their own way, without taking into account the pilgrims’ presence. Yes, sir, this is devotion !}

Going through Castilla, using the "andaderos".

_{We have breakfast in Sahagun and we visit its nice churches. When we leave the town we take a « modern path ». It is already too hot. About six walkers that walk the « modern path » are overtaken each day by the Xacobea cycling tour. The narrow road, which is beside the modern road, sometimes becomes a path and it is never used. However, cyclists like riding their bicycles on the « modern path » more.}

_{We arrive at Burgo Ranero at one o’clock p.m. People are coming out of mass. It is too hot. We stamp our credentials to the pilgrims’ hostel. There is a computer in the hostel, one more that does not work. We meet up a pilgrim from Cadiz in the hostel. He says that he knows us, that was following us for more than an hour before arriving at Calzadilla and he could not overtake us. He says we walk very well, in a uniform way and without moving our bodies. Paca and I, grateful to anybody that notices our walking skills, thanks him and feel we are exemplary pilgrims. The hostel keeper does not appear, so we stamp our credentials ourselves and go looking for a room at the Lozano Inn. We have lunch at the bar El Peregrino. Compulsory siesta.}

_{Doña Mercedes, Lozano Inn’s owner, tells us stories of pilgrims in the evening. The story of the pilgrim Manuel is especially moving. Manuel did the pilgrimage with two companions in 1993. They promise to do the Camino again this year. Manuel will not do it any more because he died. About the other two, Doña Mercedes is waiting for one of them that promised to visit her. We learn that Doña Mercedes is an expert in pilgrims. Little by little we realise that this woman has a lot of memories of pilgrims. We saw that she revisits these memories with nostalgia. Doña Mercedes is like one more milestone in the Camino.}