20km

I have some leftover pasta from dinner for breakfast, and leave to a city of fog. The cathedral clock strikes at 8.30am.

There’s an inviting bar called Cafeteria Madrid at the edge of the city, so I pop in to have a café con leche. The orange cake looks tasty, so I order one, which comes bigger than I expect, and get a free tortilla, which I didn’t expect either (and which I realise is in line with the “free tapas with drink” rule in the León province). The tortilla is amazing, with melt in-your-mouth potatoes. With two big breakfasts in succession, I’m stuffed.

I walk out to a pavement with a row of bare trees in fog. Unseen birds call, sounding eerily modulated and enveloped. The thick fog and straight road creates a different kind of purgatory from the Meseta.

The route splits off to a gravel path that is still parallel to the road, but it is welcome ground for feet. I start to walk towards bluer skies and clearer air as I near Murias de Rechivaldo, although it is still is a bit misty. I’m now mostly between road and private property, and a dog barks at me from one of them as I take an off-road pee.

At the town, I pass a bar, and Edoardo comes out to get me. Ingrid is inside too. They had walked ahead of me when I was getting my second breakfast at Astorga. Still full, I just get a coffee.

The skies are now sunny and clear as we leave the bar. Some way down the path, we take our warm jackets off. There is no wind, and my thermometer says it is 10°C. I start to sweat as I walk so I take off my fleece layer as well, leaving a T-shirt—for the first time in a long time.

On the path after Santa Catalina de Somoza, there is an 88-year-old man selling Camino things from a makeshift table at the entrance of his property. In thick Spanish, he first speaks casually, but moves on to some complex topics I can’t understand, and talks in a serious manner. Edoardo and Ingrid listen and chat. Ethan catches up and stops with us. He doesn’t understand too much Spanish either so we just stand there. It’s getting cold from being stationary, with the occasional breeze, so I put on my wind jacket. Ingrid tells me later the man was talking about the Spanish Civil War and other hard things in his life.

I fall into a natural pace with Ethan, walking a bit in front of the other two. His English is not the most fluent, so we both try to speak with my limited French as well. It is engaging practice, and I refresh my vocabulary of French words from university lessons as we find connections. We talk about our countries (one of his parents is from Ivory Coast, but he now lives in a town south of Lyon), the kind of food there, and why we are doing the Camino. He shares that he’s not on the Camino of his own accord, but as part of a court sentence. It’s interesting, to say the least, and makes me wonder if Singapore would ever consider less damaging and more rehabilitative forms of punishment.

We reach the albergue at Rabanal del Camino at 2.45pm. The guy who runs the albergue has Nepal prayer flags and a prayer bowl. I learn that he lived and worked in Nepal for six months.

We’re early, and after freshening up, a lot of us are either in our beds or lounging around, chatting at the kitchen/dining area upstairs. Edoardo and I find a moka pot in the kitchen, so we get some coffee powder from a small store to make coffee for everyone. It’s perfect, as Rabanal del Camino starts to get really cold as the sun sets.

After dinner at one of the two open restaurants in town, a few of us—James, Roman, Alberto, Ingrid, Edoardo, and me—hole up in the warm dining area upstairs and have some chamomile tea. A guitar is passed around and Alberto, Edoardo, and I play a bit. I try to find songs that everyone knows, and there’s a little singalong.

There’s a relief map on the wall, that shows that we’ll pass through mountains for the first time on the Camino as we head to Ponferrada, a city that lies in a circular valley. Tomorrow we will also reach the highest point on the Camino, the Cruz de Ferro.