Hornillos del Camino

Day 18 - To Hornillos
(pr. Horneos)
21 kms; Difficulty 2/3

Today was a VERY interesting day.

I travelled through a small village and saw a little church that I decided to stop at. There was a nun there who gave everyone a miraculous medal around their neck, put her hands on our shoulders and said a prayer. I don’t know what it was about that little church, but many people became quite emotional when inside. This nun was from the St. Vincent de Paul order who are committed to serving the poor. She told us the story of how she became a nun.
Many years ago, on this one particular day, she was in Paris with friends. She got separated from them and got lost. She saw a “shrine” and went in, prayed, and asked herself what she should do with her life. She heard a voice tell her that she should join the St. Vincent de Paul order. And so she did. That was 40 years ago! And she has been serving ever since.

A couple days ago I was phoning around looking for a place to stay at Hornillos. At one hotel I talked to a man named Samuel. He told me if I couldn’t find a place to call him back and he would see what he could do. So I called him back. He set me up at a place about 10 km out of town called El Molino, his parent’s place which is usually closed down but they were willing to open it up for desperate pilgrims. When I got into town I went to see Samuel and he called someone to come and pick me up. By then there was several others that had joined the group to go out there. While I was waiting for the ride I saw a picture on his wall about the movie “The Way” and he proceeded to tell me this story:
In 2003 Martin Sheen, and Emilio‘s son Taylor did the Camino Trail. I read that they did it by car, I guess because they only had two weeks.
It turned out that they stayed at El Molino. Taylor and Samuel's sister met, fell in love and eventually got married.
In 2009 they all went back to Spain for Taylor‘s wedding and stayed to shoot the movie. Samuel told me they shot scenes of the movie at El Molino and a man by the name of Maxi, who was also in the movie, is still at El Molino. So I was anxious to get there and check it out.
El Molino is a BIG beautiful place that kind of reminds me of the plantation homes in the southern states. I can tell it was an active Albergue at one time, still beautiful, but becoming rundown. Samuel‘s parents live in Burgos and I guess they have Maxi looking after it. I took many pictures and when I have the chance I will watch the movie again to see if I can recognize any parts of El Molino!
Photo of Samuel and you’ll see a picture of the movie on the wall. If you zoom in you will see it signed by Martin Sheen in 2011.
You can see Maxi in the bottom left corner of the last picture.Read more