El Burgo Ranero → León
Distance: 23.2 miles / 37.4km - via train
Elevation: +650ft, -816ft
I woke up this morning at 4am and couldn’t fall back asleep, which was annoying. I was originally supposed to be walking to Mansilla today, but Tovin is taking the train to León today, and also today is supposed to be a scorcher. The town we’re in right now has a train station, so I looked into buying a train ticket, and ended up deciding to take the train to León with him.
At around 7:30am, our alarms started to go off, so we got up packed up our things and got ready for the day. We started walking to the train station at around 8:15am for our 8:40am train. We ran into another pilgrim, who was taking the train to León because he was injured. It was a short train ride, about 30 minutes, to León. It’s hard to believe that it was only a 30 minute train ride, but would’ve taken me two days of walking to get there.
Once we got to León, we had about an hour before Tovin took a bus to Madrid, where he was going to fly back to the United States - so we went to a café, each got a coffee, and sat together being sad that he was leaving. Eventually, we took a short walk over to the bus station where we ended up saying goodbye, and it was really difficult and sad, even though I know he’s going to be back in less than three weeks.
After I finished dropping him off at the train station, I walked around León and explored. I went through the cathedral, saw some churches, sat in a few squares, and people-watched for a while at one plaza. There was some sort of military music rehearsal going on that I sat and watched for a while. Eventually, I walked around town a bit more and ended up running into Mark! He and I met up with Jennifer, Kathleen and her mom and aunt, and we all sat and caught up for a while. It was nice to see them since I was a day behind them the past few days, and it was nice to catch up and see some familiar faces again.
We all sat and had a few drinks until around 2pm, when I left and went to go check into my hostel. This hostel was a completely keyless, meaning there is no one manning the place, and your access is through your phone only - which was interesting. After I got settled into the hostel, I went to a kebab shop where I got a kebab for lunch. I’ve been craving a donor kebab for many weeks so I was glad to finally get one. After I ate, I was feeling really tired from having not slept that well last night, so I took about an hour and a half long nap.
After my nap, I got up and did some planning of my route for tomorrow. There is a scenic route, and then a route next to a road. The town I was originally planning on stopping at is along the not-so-nice road path, and I really wanted to go along the scenic route, which meant I had to choose a different town to stay in. That means I will have to walk about 20 miles tomorrow. On top of that, tomorrow is supposed to be a high of 95°F, so I looked into how to ship my pack ahead for the day. I haven’t shipped my pack ahead yet so far, but with a 20 mile day and it being so hot, I figured it would be a good idea.
After I did some research on it, I took a walk to decathlon (a sports shop in Spain, similar to REI) and looked around for a while. I ended up getting a small collapsible day pack that was only three dollars! Since I’m planning on shipping my bag ahead tomorrow, only the only other bag I have is a tote bag, which would not have been fun to carry for 20 miles. After I finished at decathlon, I walked about a mile back to the main part of town and dropped some things off at my hostel.
I met up with Mark, a Dutch woman named Merel who now lives in Hong Kong, a guy named Bram, and guy whose name I can’t remember. We sat at on a terrace for a while and had some drinks. I was having some trouble figuring out how to get my bag shipped ahead tomorrow because my hostel doesn’t have staff on the property, and everything is managed through your phone, so the luggage transport people wouldn’t have a way to get in and get my bag.
I would’ve had to leave it on the street, so I talked with Merel, and it turns out she’s also going to the same place as me tomorrow, and is also shipping her pack for the first time! It was nice that we were in the same boat together. We decided to ship both of our bags from her hostel tomorrow morning, and it was nice to get to know her and figure out the situation. We stopped by her hostel and filled out the tags to ship our bags ahead, and then met up with everyone else to get one more drink and a tapa.
In León, all the drinks come with a free tapa, so if you have to pay for food when you get a drink, you really got scammed. Since I had such a big kebab for lunch, I wasn’t feeling super hungry, and just had one drink and one tapa. At around 10pm, I walked back to the albergue and chatted with Mark for a little bit, and then went up and got ready for bed for the night.
I have to be up at 5:30am tomorrow since Merel and I agreed to meet at her albergue at 6:30am and walk together. Tomorrow is going to be about 36 km or 22 miles, which will be the longest I’ve walked so far. It’s also going to be very hot, so I’m excited but nervous for how tomorrow is going to go.
Today’s been a really long but exciting day, and I’m feeling a lot of emotions - between missing Tovin, anxious for tomorrow, and realizing that I have about 2 weeks of the Camino left. It’s crazy that I’m nearly there - only 314km to go!
