When the last 5km feels like the first 15!

Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz – Day 14 – 21kms!

After a very Ho hum breakfast at 7am, the shuttle dropped me back to my starting point in Hornillos…a very unremarkable town….

Then it was a gradual uphill climb for the first hour or so!

Then out into the fields of wheat and windmills..

The pink sky behind me promising another warm day!

I’m kinda at the point where I never need to see another wheat field! Climbing climbing…more plasters on broken little toe….so far managing the complaining feet!

Then the landscape opened out to what seemed like miles of flatland…

The odd cross to amuse us!

The odd shoe on a pile of rocks!

And a soul searching stretch of gravel path bordered by wheatfields…

Then over the brow of the straight Hontanas Village appeared below …. The halfway point.,., coffee, bathroom and water restock for the 2nd half of today’s journey!

A cute little village with the first cafe open at 10.30am… nothing else further on, so my theory from yesterday is incorrect! Maybe stopping at the first cafe is smart!!! Here I met a German lady also travelling on her own Claudia!

As I left Hontanus I walked down the village street to the church at the bottom of the hill…

I went inside…it was nice and cool and I could light a candle for someone….

I did this for Steve Waugh (Jill’s brother) who passed away suddenly yesterday….and took a moment for the family…

Then I was out in the countryside for my next 10.5 kms…. Managing my screaming toe! The rest of the day was pretty flat and meandered through the valley….

It was nice to have a change of landscape from wheatfields and wind farms! I sat on the side of the path about 4kms from my destination…taking a break in the shade of a tree…but what I didn’t realise was that 20meters over the next rise were the ruins of the convent of San Anton…

So everyone that marched past me must have thought I was crazy….anyway…another break!

Along with the masses…. Actually took off shoes and put feet up for 20 mins…

Little memorials in the stone…

Under the windows to the sky! And shade of the ruins!!! 30degrees and rising outside!

Leaving here the vegetation took a desert like turn with waist high thistles – cactus like thistles! And this is where the title of today’s story kicks in…

My destination in the distance…at this point, the taste of my first beer is teasing my tastebuds….the sweat is rolling down the side of my face (my bandana already saturated) ….the shoes are loosened off as the feet always swell in the last few kms!….and the broken toe is screaming “Let me out!” My pace has slowed, and without my Camino buddies to chat to and distract me, all of the above kick in!

It’s just one foot in front of the other….

As the village gets closer! I google the hotel…but follow the Camino trail through town…

This gal almost getting me in! But as my hotel was at end of the town I kept plodding on…

Checked in and ran a cold bath (there you go Sue – I can do it) to soothe my feet, wash my hair then do the laundry! , which dries in an hour or so on my windowsill facing west!

Ok then it was beer time! A bar across the corner…. A handle only €1.80 and Jean Pierre from France….testing out my schoolgirl French, and Claudia from Germany joined me – until 4pm they locked the door and it was over….compulsory feet up time!

A nice Canadian couple Sarah and Jerry, who I walked with, off an on, today asked me to join them for dinner at 7pm….so it will be an eat and sleep evening as 25kms tomorrow!