Huerta de Rey to Santo Domingo de Silos

I have walked into Santo Domingo once before, when I walked the Camino Castellano-Aragonés (very highly recommended, btw). But this time a forum member alerted us to the fact that there is a spectacular gorge very close to the Camino that also goes into Santo Domingo. So once again, we decided to take a detour off the “true“ Camino route.

The first 15 km had a little bit of elevation up and down through some really nice pine forests. From the village of Peñacoba, we went off Camino, following a GPS track that was supposed to take us on a trail through the woods to the starting point of the gorge. Once we got a few kilometers in, however, we realized that the track had not been properly recorded. It was essentially a couple of straight lines. So there we were, pretty high up and trying to find our way down to the trail head to go through the gorge. We had a general idea which way to go, and thankfully, Clare is much more adept at reading contour lines than I am. So after a couple of slightly hairy kilometers, we found our way down. I would not have done this by myself, or with anyone else who skills were not as great as Clare‘s. We were never in any danger, we were far from the cliffs, and the worst thing that could have happened would have been for us to have to turn around and backtrack. But thankfully we didn’t.

The path through the gorge is pretty cool. It is all on a metal path with a railing that is attached to the rock face. We saw lots of birds of prey. Even though it’s very short, it was in my opinion worth the detour (and those adventuresome kms).

We arrived in Santo Domingo early enough to have a lunch. It was edible and expensive. Then we visited the Romanesque cloister, which is one of Spain’s absolute best. We went to vespers in the monastery’s church at seven. The monks here are very famous for their Gregorian chants. They released a recording in the 90s, and I read that more than 2 million copies were sold in the United States. There were more than 20 of them, I’d say, ranging in age from late 30s through very ancient. The chanting was soothing and kind of mesmerizing, but I cannot imagine that they do it six times a day!Baca lagi