Robliza de Cojos to San Muñoz (25 km)

This Camino offers a great way to start up slowly. . Perfectly flat, all off road, and all on the Cañada Real. I’ve seen several maps of this wide path (90 Castilian varas, or about 72 m wide and at least 500 km in length). It was first decreed by Alfonso X in the 13th century, so this is a tradition dating back to the time when people were building my favorite type of church. I passed the ruins of an adobe venta/inn where the drivers would stop for food, information plaque and all.

Today I played “where’s the mojón” game, looking for old stones on either side to mark the borders of the open cañada path. Private land is on both sides, and some of these parcels have lots of livestock, many of them looking to me like bulls. Since most of the fences looked pretty sturdy, I wasn’t too worried. I did misread one arrow, though, and opened the gate to walk through a ranch. There were lots of cattle walking all around, but none came close to me. About 10 minutes later I realized I wasn’t on the Camino but should have been on the other side of the barbwire fence. I’m pretty sure that if there had been any dangerous bulls, there would have been a clear warning, like others I’ve seen. But in any case I hightailed it out.

I arrived in my destination at about 1 PM. The señora behind the bar at the Bar Chan told me where to go to pick up the key and also told me she’d come back to make me a lunch later.

The mayor herself greeted me and told me I would be sharing the albergue with a Ukrainian family. It felt very intrusive, but I really had no other option. I have met the young mother and her six year old boy, and the father is off working the grape harvest in Zamora. We have had some basic conversation via Google translate but I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to barge in and start asking all the questions I would love to ask. I can’t imagine what they’ve been through, but I guess in many ways they are the lucky ones.

The mayor told me she takes Igor on a walk every afternoon and teaches him vocabulary. She is coming back this afternoon to take me to visit the church and she said Igor will come too.Read more