Castrojeriz

Today we got up early and started our walk to Frómista in the dark. In fact the first hour or so wasn’t the light of headlamps! We had a big uphill in the dark. Then we began being able to see.

We’re on La Meseta, a relatively flat agricultural area that is isolated. La Meseta has a reputation as a boring, monotonous weeklong stretch, and many people skip it because “it’s boring.” We have both found this whole area lovely! It’s quiet and pretty, and the agricultural fields are interesting. Today we saw dry agriculture as well as irrigated fields. We saw many different crops, and there were several we couldn’t identify. The weirdest thing we saw was when we could see a rise ahead and saw what looked like a white bus. “What IS that?” we kept asking each other. Turns out it was a boat in a canal. We walked along side the canal for about two miles.

So having mostly recovered from COVID we have been feeling good. And it was all fun and games until about the last three or four miles today when all of a sudden David started to tilt. Like his body is leaning to one side! Because of his cognitive issues it was hard to get a straight answer out of him about what was going on. (Just as an aside, not giving information in a straightforward way seems to be one of the big things that has changed about David’s day to day personality. He kind of talks circles around whatever he’s trying to say. It’s quite frustrating for the listener, usually me. Maybe it’s frustrating to him, too? It’s hard to say.) It seems that somehow he hurt his lower back and that’s made him lean? He looks a little like a banana or a boomerang when he normally would be standing straight up and down. We made it to the hotel and he’s konked out and I gave him three ibuprofen. Not sure what we’ll do tomorrow. I carried David’s backpack and my own the last two miles or so. And we can ship his backpack ahead and I can carry both of our water and sweaters, etc. Some kindhearted people on the trail were telling me he was very badly injured and needed to go to the hospital. But I’m not sure kindhearted trail passersby are the best source of medical information! Obviously I’ll let you know how we dealt with this tomorrow once we figure it out ourselves.Read more