Day 13, Belorado to Ages

At 28km, this was our longest walk to date and I had been trepidatious about it for days. We were on the road at 6.05am, long before sunrise, in an effort to avoid too many hours of full sunshine later on. Most of the people in our dorm had the same idea so we could hardly have slept beyond 5.30 even if we’d wanted to.
We knew the first 12km to Villafranca were pretty flat and easy and decided to wait for breakfast until we got there. The early morning walking was a pleasure, cool and comfortable. Fiona, as always, was using the Merlin app to identify birdsong as she walked. We missed a Camino sign in Tosantos, the first village we passed through, and added a few hundred unnecessary kilometres to our day’s tally (the first time this has happened). I think I was distracted by the discrepancy between the name Plaza Real and the rundown reality of the main drag. The next village offered another beautiful church but we pressed on without stopping. Despite our little mishap we were sitting down to breakfast just after 8.30. As we tucked into tortilla and coffee in the sun, we met up with our extended Camino family, Rachel, Nick and Pablo.
The next stage involved an hour and half of uphill walking, much of it through forest. I put my headphones in and listened to The Mirror and the Light to distract me from the effort of this section and that part of the Camino is now connected in my brain with Henry VIII disputing the issue of transubstantiation with an ill-fated Anabaptist.
Fiona pointed out the butterfly activity I was missing and I turned off audible. We were surprised by a field of goats wearing bells (we’ve now seen ‘cow bells’ on cows, goats and horses’). We agreed the countryside was beginning to look like England - we could even be in Surrey.
Eventually we reached the pretty village of San Juan where we would have preferred to stay but couldn’t get accommodation. Had a fizzy water there and set off for the final 3.5km.
Our destination was Ages, the first small village we have stayed in overnight. Once again there was a lovely church (which we visited with Sheryl and Janice to get our Camino passports stamped) and a plethora of amazing timbered medieval buildings that had seen better days. Happily there were also nice places to eat.
In the evening we had a lovely Camino dinner with Rachel, Nick, Paul and Roz. I gave up on
vegetarianism entirely tonight and ate chicken - the veggie alternative was tortilla which I’d eaten for breakfast today and would, no doubt, eat again tomorrow morning.
All in all, this was a special day. Felt I’d managed better then I feared and had actually enjoyed the walking, despite the distance.
As for the blisters, the piercing last night did help and though they are still a problem, they didn’t seem so bad today.Read more