Camino Take Two: Castrojeriz to Sahagún

Flat.

Well, not griddle-flat, Kansas-flat, kitchen-counter flat, but flat enough that I know that I would never be interested in walking this part of the Camino de Santiago. There are hills, but they're like Eastern Ontario hills, barely 50 metres high and with inclines so gentle that even the kids romp up them on their little pink and red bikes.

The sky looks as if it could stretch on forever, which is good: it's when you start seeing the mountains ahead of you and to your left that you're reminded that, in a couple of days, you'll end up crossing two main mountain ranges. This is territory for going fast when you can, stopping off to see the churches and monuments that interest you, and not worrying about the ones that don't.

I love the plains, but I can understand why they drive the walkers insane. What must it be like, I wonder, to be out there, day after day, nothing but heat and wind and not being able to arrive in a town until ages after you first see it? What must it be like to walk endlessly, just clocking your progress by every town you pass and every monument you don't see? That's what's so great about biking the Camino: these flat roads become planes for practising Zen, just sitting on the seat of the bike and pedalling and not doing a whole hell of a lot else.

I'd already seen a lot of the monuments from the past time I was there, so there wasn't anything I particularly wanted to see, except for the churches in Frómista (got very disapproving looks from the church warden -- for wearing bike shorts? Never did figure it out) and Sahagún, where I stopped for the night. Sahagún made for a pleasant stopover. The municipal albergue has been built into the attic of the town museum (which is itself located in a reclaimed church) and has good, firm beds, a big kitchen, and lots of French pilgrims who don't seem all that interested in talking to pilgrims if they're not French.

Whatever. I end up spending a lot of time nosing around the Iglesia de San Tirso; I wanted to see San Lorenzo, but there was a funeral on at the time (surprising, the number of people who wear beach clothing and white high-heels to a funeral in Spain). And then a quiet night, just two or three lights broadcasting onto the ceiling of the church, the occasional sound of someone's sleeping bag rustling in their bed.