Granja de Moreruela to Tábara

The day started badly, I was very tired and too busy talking to Jonathan, and we missed an arrow and walked a couple of km in the wrong direction and had to walk back, meaning we would do 30 km today.

Having said that, I enjoyed the rest of the walk, there are some very beautiful bits, but once we got over the bridge we decided to go via the road through Faramontanos, it was uphill most of the way, and tiring, but the road was quiet.

There was a detour due to the new AVE rail line, that hadn't quite reached Tábara last time. The entrance to the town was very different, it was just a dirt road two years ago but is now tarmac with pavements and parking spaces.

We had already decided to stay at the municipal albergue, it was on the far side of town about 1 km away, but we found our way there and logged in. Once we had all done the daily camino tasks we walked into town for something to eat, and to get supplies. In the evening the hospitalero provided a communal meal, but I wasn't hungry and I was tired, so I just wanted to lie down on my bed and listen to some music. He didn't seem too pleased, i guess he thought I was refusing his hospitality.

When everyone came back after dinner they said that the hospitalero told them that the albergue in Santa Marta de Terra, tomorrow's destination, had closed to be disinfected. As there was nowhere else to stay near there, the next albergue (Calzadilla de Tera) was a further 14 km meaning we would have to walk nearly 40 km.

So I had a look at the map on the Gronze app, and using the satellite overlay feature was able to work out a path across country that would take us directly to Calzadilla de Tera, and by my calculation it was about 25km. So, a few of us decided to give it a go, we would walk to the coffee point in Villanueva de las Peras and from there join the cross country route following the Gronze map.

The walk to Villanueva was uneventful, and seemed to go quicker than I remembered from last time, the cafe was open, the coffee and tostada were great, and it had the cleanest toilets I have seen in Spain so far. After our refreshments, we set off to find the farm path we had looked at on the map last night, and were soon on our way.

The plan to go cross country worked beautifully, it was a very pleasant walk that was again almost a straight line to our destination. When we got there we were the first to arrive which was good because there were only six beds. Two Spanish guys arrived shortly thereafter and the albergue was full. A German guy turned up having gone on a further 2 km to find that the albergue in the next village was also full. According to the guidebook the albergue at Santa Marta can be a bit of a bottleneck because it only has 13 beds, with nothing else nearby, and now that it had closed without much warning, pilgrims were struggling to find a bed.

The German guy had walked back to Calzadilla but left when he saw there were no beds here either. About an hour later Jan arrived, and knowing that the next place was full, I gave Jan my bed and slept on the floor, I put down some blankets on the floor, then my paper sheet and then my sleeping bag, it worked ok. Tomorrow we have a longish walk to Mombuey.

We had to walk a bit of a distance to get a cafe bar, and they only had tapas, so we made the best of it, but at least we had beds for the night.Lue lisää