Shantelle's Camino50

Monastery experience - Take 2 🎬

The walk today was just gorgeous... you'll see in the pics this amazing patchwork quilt effect with the landscape! We climbed a pretty steep hill for about a km, and then when descending, the view was just breathtaking! (Cue Imagine Dragons' - I'm on Top of the World🎶). I may have grooved my way down the hill! 😝

On a side note, we saw this French guy yesterday at San Anton, and he was limping pretty badly. He also had a sign on his pack saying he was travelling without money, and 1€ would be really appreciated. But in our haste to leave yesterday, I forgot to give him something and felt quite sad about it.

We arrived really early in San Nicolas since it was only 10kms from Castrojeriz! But I've heard from countless sources that a night here is a very special and unique experience... they only have 10 beds, so it's 1st in best dressed!

We were able to leave our packs here but were not allowed to wait around, so we planned to walk into a nearby village for lunch. As we were organising ourselves, who should limp in but the French guy! Karen started talking to him as she spoke French pretty well. We gave him some spare cash, a muesli bar, and a couple sheets of Paracetamol for his pain and said goodbye as he was going to limp on.

As we walked the 2km into town, Karen told me his very sad story... His 7yo daughter had passed suddenly 7mths ago, and it had destroyed him... he has been walking ever since and said he will continue to walk until he dies. 😞 I truly hope the spirit of the camino gives him the peace & healing he so needs. ❤️🙏

Lunch in the village was ok... I just can't get into these Bocadillas, though! (Bread roll with omelette inside)... but it was all they offered, and we were hungry! 😬

We were also told the supermarket was closed - being a Sunday - but went for a walk past it anyway. I got distracted patting a cat... next minute, I hear my name across the street! It's Karen yelling 'quick, we've got 1 minute!' 🤣 ... The owner must live next door and was sitting outside, so he opened the shop up for us! 🫶

Back at San Nicolas, we prepped our beds (bottom bunk - yay!!) I did some laundry and found a nice spot out of the wind to just sit and listen to some tunes. I met a cute lizard who tried very hard to get some chocolate from my wrapper!

Before dinner, they did a small foot cleaning ritual on all of us... very unique to this Monastery. Dinner was a simple salad, pasta, bread and vino tinto - yummo!

There's no electricity here, so we all went off to bed at 9pm!! (But I can already hear snorers - back to the earplugs! 😬)

I really enjoyed the energy of this tiny little chapel in the middle of the fields ... a very peaceful experience indeed! 🩷Lue lisää