Boadilla del Camino

28km today.  With the odd fractions of km, that's 60km in two days - which is probably really a little more than enough!

George started this morning early, so that I didn't catch him up too soon!   In fact I wasn't moving quite as fast as usual to start with - a sore spot on a toe seems to have developed during the course of the day to a proper blister.  

I'd expected to get breakfast after about 9km at Castrojeriz, but thought I'd not go to the first cafe, because the first isn't necessarily the best.  In this case, despite Castrojeriz being quite sizeable, the first was the only one open!  Of course it's Sunday, which probably makes a difference. So breakfast was water and some biscuits I happened to have in the backpack.

Castrojeriz is part way up that hill in the picture above.  You come down from there, across a bit of a plain, then up a fairly steep section.   It was on the plain section that the rain started - not a lot of rain, but enough to stop after ten minutes or so and get out the anorak and the backpack cover.   And ten minutes later it stopped again, just as the hill is taking effect and the inside of the anorak is getting hot...

A little further on, another hill -and a van at the top of it doing coffee (not great but not bad) and orange juice (small cup) - better than nothing and a rest.  

Past Puenta Fitero,  then a few km to Italo del Castillo, where I spied George just finishing his coffee - and the bells were ringing at the nearby Church, so I thought I'd get to Mass.

But despite the bells, there was no Mass.  It seems to me that the bells ring for the time when Mass once was, or perhaps is in another village this week.  They also ring half an hour later for the consecration: but there is no consecration here.  A notice on a noticeboard says something about the lack of vocations - an area that had 50 priests a couple of decades ago now has ten.  Those attending Mass today are presumably at a different church.

So back to the café at which I'd seen George, and a reasonable rest with a good coffee and a sparkling water with ice and lemon - which set me up for the last 9km.

More Meseta landscape, and finally the last kilometre into Boadilla, where a very well organised Albergue run by two brothers opens its welcoming doors...