Alcaracejos to Hinojosa del Duque

It was so hot last night that I slept on top of the bed sheet rather than my sleeping bag, i woke about an hour before my alarm was due to go off, so Iay in bed and prayed a bit and thought about the walk today.

My blisters had been very sore yesterday, the rough terrain had not helped, especially the final 4km. Fortunately, there are no new blisters, and I am hopeful that they will heal quickly as we have some longer walks coming up in the next few days. I am also running out of painkillers so I hope we reach a town with a pharmacy soon, unlike supermarkets in the UK, the ones here don't seem to sell them.

We were low on water but would be walking through a couple of small towns today, one at 3km and one at 9km, so we hoped to get water at the bar in the first town and breakfast at the second one. At least that was the plan. The bar in the second town was closed because it was sunday. Still, it was a very pleasant walk, it was fairly level on dirt paths that undulated like a rough sea. On the downside, there was very little shade and nowhere to sit, not even so much as a rock.

Just outside of Hinojosa we arrived at an ermita and there were seats, so we took our packs off and sat down for a 10 minute break. The final few kilometers are always difficult, by the time you get to that point, you can be quite tired and although you can often see the town, it feels like it is taking forever to get there. However, when we finally got there, the bar was open and they had coffee and tostada! The square we were in had three or four cafes all spread around the church.

The keys for the albergue were to be collected from the police station, which we had trouble finding even though we knew it was in the square somewhere. A lady who was passing by, seeing that we were pilgrims looking lost, she guessed our dilemma and pointed us to the police station door.

Tomorrows walk is 32 kilometres on a long hot stretch, apparently a lot of pilgrims get a taxi to a certain point and walk the rest, so we decided to do that, it would help give the blisters a little bit of a rest. We arranged for a taxi to collect us from the square at 0800, (he arrived at 0730, fortunately we had been up for ages and had gone to a cafe in the square for breakfast anyway).

We had a fairly mediocre dinner in one of the cafe/bars, i had hoped to go into the cathedral but it was closed. So as I couldn't go in to light a candle, i stood on the steps to pray. We went back to the albergue, and had an early night.もっと詳しく