Córdoba to Cerro Muriano 22km

I slept surprisingly well considering I had a two hour siesta yesterday afternoon. The albergue was ok but not worth the cost. We left a little later than usual today but the first hour walking through the city was quite quick. There is something about walking through a city that is just beginning to wake up. It took us a full hour to walk from the albergue to the edge of the city, and that was with a short cut, courtesy of CityMapper. we had hoped to get a coffee in a new urban development a few km outside of Córdoba but one cafe seemed ot have closed permanently and nothing else was open yet, so we carried on. It was at this point that the path started to go uphill, reasonably steeply but for a long distance. The first 8-10km of today's stage had been quite flat but it was now more or less uphill all the way to Cerro Muriano, with one steep ascent of 450m.

The guide book told us the distance and elevation but not how difficult the path would be, and the path was horrible - steep, stony and uneven. Ken slipped a couple of times and dinged his knee, he put a brave face on it but I think he really hurt himself.

We climbed and climbed and finally reached the summit, from where we could see the town, we could also see that the path widened and flattened and went downhill. We stopped when we reached the edge of the town, although the albergue was not very far away, there was a cafe opened, and we both were in need of a good coffee and something to eat. It seemed quite a posh place but it was no more expensive than anywhere else, and the coffee was good and very welcome.

We arrived at the albergue/hostal and got booked in. It was much nicer than the one in Córdoba and much cheaper, and the shower was one of the best so far. We got our clothes washed in the bathroom sink but one of the problems of staying in hostals is that they don't usually have anywhere to hang the clothes up to dry. So we went downstairs and asked one of the staff if there was somewhere we could dry our clothes. He said yes and asked us to follow him, he went out the hostal, crossed the road and walked to a house down the street, up the driveway and around the back of a house. There was an extendable drying rack bolted onto the wall of the house, which he said we could use. It turned out it was his parent's house. It was yet another example of the kindness of strangers that you encounter on the camino.

Our room in the alberge was decorated by photographs which I recognised as the work of Robert Capa, the famous photojournalist, in fact he is credited with being the first war photojournalist. Most of the pictures were from the Spanish civil war.

When Ken and I were sitting at a table out front having more refreshments the owner came by and asked if we had settled in ok and if we had enjoyed our dinner (which we had). I mentioned the pictures to him and he spoke a little bit about Capa, then went away, returning a few minutes later with a folder of photos taken by Capa. It turned out that his father had met Capa, and that he had stayed here. So for the next hour or so he told us stories about Capa and his companions, and the refugees escaping the fighting who walked along the railway line to safety. His most famous photograph from the Spanish civil war, that of a soldier at the exact moment he was shot by the fascists, the one that really made his name, was taken on a hill we had crossed earlier in the day. The town of Espejo had a statue of it to commemorate the war. Tomorrow we will walk the very path those refugees took, as did Capa to photograph them. It turned out to be a really interesting evening. The owner asked Ken, whose Spanish is excellent, if he could help his granddaughter with her English homework, which, of course, he did.Read more