Tábara to Calzadilla de Tera

We were all up early, at 0530 as the hospitalero was providing breakfast, I thought I should go since I had offended him last night by not going for dinner. We had some, quite strong, coffee, some toast and jam, it was ok.

I set off with Jonathan, Giolele and Jane and we made good time on the paths. The walk to Villanueva was uneventful, and seemed to go quicker than I remembered from last time, we covered the 14km in just 4.5 hours. 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, Jonathan and Gioele set off to find the farm path we had looked at on the map last night, and were soon on our way. Jane had decided go to Santa Marta and walk from there, and to be fair, we were not even sure our plan to go cross country would work.

However, it 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.Read more