Campanario to Don Benito

We were up in plenty of time this morning, the bus wasn't coming until 0925, i had slept quite well considering how hot it had been yesterday. We had the air con on most of the night, I woke up at 0200 feeling cold, and turned it off for a while.

Once we were up, and packed, we heading into the town, and whilst we waited for the bus the cafe owner stamped our credentials. The bus was right on time and it had two short stops along the way, it took about 40 minutes to arrive in Don Benito. It was full of people obviously heading into work and school/college.

Our first priority was to get some breakfast, and there was a big cafe across teh road from the bus station so we headed there. we were in no hurry and took our time having breakfast. It was a 15 minute walk to the hostal, and my feet were feeling a lot better. I was hopeful that the rest from walking had done some good, getting buses is not ideal, but sometimes it can't be avoided. It is a very long walk from Almería to Santiago and a lot can happen on the way.

Our room wasn't ready and so we sat and had some cold drinks, the Hostal Galacia was very nice, the food looked good and we were pleased with our choice of accommodation. The room was functional rather than luxurious, but it was clean, and we had clean sheets, towels and air conditioning. The shower was good, and we managed to get a few small bits of washing done and dried on the small balcony using some paracord as a washline.

Dinner was excellent, much better than the standard camino fare, I had steak with egg and chips, almost a proper scottish dinner. We asked the owner about getting to Medellín, for the next stage was a bit tricky. The guidebook (and the camino forum) warned about two accident blackspots where pilgrims had to walk on a very busy road with no verge, some pilgrims had been injured, and the road was referred to as the road from hell. The local camino association recommended getting a bus for the first 9km to avoid black spot number one, and then using a variant route across country to avoid the other. The variant route took us past our planned destination - Torrefresneda, but brought us closer to Merída, but it was also 5km shorter. The problem was that we didn't have a map for the variant route , although I had read a newspaper article that said the friends of the camino had gone out during covid and put waymarkers in. The advice was to check with the locals first, so we did.

The owner of the hostal was adamant that we should turn our plan upside down and walk to Medellín, he reckoned if we left early enough the traffic should not be too bad. from Medellín it was a pleasant enough walk to the next town, Yelbes, although a good bit of it was on a road, there was a verge and it was a quiet country road. From there, he suggested that we get a taxi from there as the section after that was an accident blackspot. He also said it was far too dangerous in the current heatwave to try and walk the variant route. On the camino as on any hike, local knowledge is important and advice should not be ignored, so we decided without much debate to take his advice. As we were getting a taxi we decided to go past Torrefresneda anyway to San Pedro de Merída, that would give us an relatively short, and mostly downhill walk on what would be our last day together on the camino.

With that agreed, it was time for bed.Lue lisää