May 21 Castrojeriz to Fromista

The theme song today is another one from the Beatles:  "Good Day (some) Sunshine".  When we awoke this morning, it was a beautiful, very cool sunny day.   After a quick coffee at the hotel bar, we set out for Fromista, a walk of approximately 17 miles.    The first mile or so was a relatively flat walk and a great way to get warmed up for the walk to come.

After that, the trail climbed very steeply for the next mile or.  Along the way, we passed the grave of a fallen hiker.  We have seen several of these along the way, and they have all been on steep hills!  My guess is heart attack...

At this point, the sky became cloudy and the temperature felt like it dropped 5 degrees.  This was the type of weather we were to see for the rest of the day.  This is actually ideal hiking weather- temperature in low 40's, no sun.

Perhaps because of seeing the grave marker, I decided to listen to the music of two of my favorite artists of all time, both of whom died much to young-  Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield (as a solo artist and also with the Impressions).   Those guys are both such great singers and their music sounds as fresh and soulful today as it did in the 70's.  Marvin's back to back songs of "What's Going On" and "Mercy, Mercy Me" have to rank as Top 10 songs of all time.

The geography today is very similar to the Midwest of the USA.  Rolling farmland, with field after field of wheat and oats.   Fortunately, it's spring time, and everything is green and soothing to the senses.  We will see how it goes for the rest of the week, because we still have another 60+ miles of this stuff, and it could get maddening after a while!

At 13 miles, we stopped for lunch in a very small village called Boadillo del Camino.  After a terrific lite lunch we proceeded to Fromista, along a lovely canal tha is used for irrigating the crops.  This walk should have been about 4 miles....however, we seemed to take a wrong turn somewhere in this little town, and wandered around for an extra mile or two before finding the hotel.  Interesting that nobody we stopped on the street knew where our hotel was!  This is only a town of 800 people.  I grew up in a town of 30,000, and in the small towns, everybody knows about everything in town!  Finally, we checked into our room at the Hostal del Camino, a very adequate, but extraordinarily basic, room.

A couple of days ago, I talked about the various levels of accommodations and services along the Camino.  Today, we came across another.  This was a bus load of Danish people.  They cover the last 700 Km (a little over 400 miles) of the Camino in a period of 10 days.  During the day, people will walk part of the day, and bus part of the day.  So, yet another way in which markets react to the needs of customers.  This one serving a market where the people want to see most of the Camino, want to have the experience of hiking the Camino, but don't have the time or perhaps energy required for the entire hike.

Last night, I missed a business call to the USA.  I was supposed to call in at 8:30, but got confused and called at 9:30 instead.  I guess I am having a hard time with doing the math on a 9 hour time difference...Embarrassing!  About twice a week, I have had calls that I make to the USA for business.  By the way, I use a Skype service that allows you to call from your computer to phones.  This particular service allows me to make unlimited calls anywhere in the world for $13 per month.  It's a terrific service, and I recommend it to anyone making International Calls.  The only requirement is that my computer (actually iPad in this case) needs to have an Internet connection.

Tomorrow is a rather flat and short walk of about 13 miles to San Zolio.  We are staying in an old 
monastery tomorrow night, so I am looking forward to our lodging.   Also, there are some interesting sights along the way, including a special church (another church...?) from the 12th century that we will tour.

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