Day 11 - Cirueña -> Viloria de Rioja

The idea for the day was to walk 20 km to Viloria de Rioja, in order to stay at the Refugio Acacio & Orietta. Eva was excited about the idea of staying at the albergue of Paulo Coelho's friends. Mark and Sonja already had reservations at the other albergue in the Viloria de Rioja. There are two albergues in the village, which is a lot for a village with only 28 inhabitants.
Eva and I started our walk to the first step, Santo Domingo de la Calzada. I was excited to visit the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. Besides the body of the Santo Domingo, the patron saint of the village, there is a rooster in a gothic chicken coop inside the church. There is a legend that a roasted rooster was placed on the mayor's table, it stood up and crowed to prove the innocence of a pilgrim who had been unjustly accused. Unfortunately, the church was closed due to the holiday in honor of the saint.
After Santo Domingo the next village is Grañón. Is a kind of village that you can cross very quickly, but it's worth to stop and go intro the church. By the way, I did this all the time, stopped and went intro every church I could. It happened a very funny situation in this church. After visiting the inside of the church, I noticed that Eva was sitting in silence. I thought that she was praying or just thinking. I left in silence, to wait for her outside. After about 15 minutes she left the church, came to me and said that she had fallen asleep. We both started laughing.
As we leave Grañón we begin to say goodbye to La Rioja and walk through the region of Castilla y León.
The next village is Redicilla del Camino. Another place that I have been waiting to visit, because of the 12th century baptismal font from the , in Romanesque style. But again my expectations were disappointed, because the church was closed. The only thing to do was to continue to Castildelgado and finally to Viloria de Rioja.Read more