On my third try, I'm finally in Sevilla to start the VLDP, at least as far as Salamanca. I've done the Frances and Portugues and this seemed like the logical next step.
Third try because I missed the first two flights from London. I had taken the Queen Mary from NYC with my son (it wasn't too expensive - check it out!) and somehow my watch and phone got stuck in some mid-Atlantic time zone. By the time I arrived at Luton, the $49 Ryanair special tube Seville had already departed. The second missed flight was just dumb: I thought 5:55 meant the afternoon, not the morning. The third one, through Madrid, left an hour late and with the 1 hour time loss I made the connection with seconds to spare. But here I am.
I had been worried about the weather, starting so late. But the first few seconds outside the airport in Seville put my mind at rest. Delightful, light rain, people walking around in shorts.
It's quite dark outside. Good thing I brought my headlamp. From the looks of things, I'll be walking in the dark quite a bit. Great to get started!
Thanks to the others who have posted here about the VLDP for the information and inspiration.
Day 0 Seville
Day 1 Guillena
Day 2 Castillo Blanco
Day 3 Almaden de la Plata
Day 4 El Real de la Jara
Day 5 Monastario
Day 6 Fuente de Cantos
Day 7 Zafra
Day 8 Villafranca de los Barros
Day 8: The word for the day is "mud." No rain, but the evidence of past rain is everywhere. The mud sucks on my boots and poles and when I pull them out, they're heavy with goo. It's like walking through quicksand. Not everywhere, but enough to watch where I step.
Went into a fancy bar in Villafranca and the girl behind the counter couldn't understand a word of my Spanish, nor I hers. She made a face, then turned her back and began to talk on the phone. Every local person I've met has been incredibly nice, and it was a shock to be treated like a bum. Maybe that's what I look like now.
Went to the grocery store and bought some yogurt and ate it in the park, then went to bed early.
Pilgrims today: 2. A Spanish guy on a heavily laden mountain bike, who had come from Sevilla and was headed all the way to Santiago. And Ennie, a Dutch woman who does video documentaries and has a podcast (in Dutch) about birds.
I think Ennie is having a richer Camino; she stops and investigates anything that looks interesting, while I simply put my head down and charge on to the next town. It's the difference between my mother, who saw travel as a race to the destination, versus my father, who stopped and dawdled and lost track of time.
Ennie says I should head down to southern Portugal after I get to Salamanca, and maybe I will. Left her behind, maybe I'll see her again in Mérida.
On my third try, I'm finally in Sevilla to start the VLDP, at least as far as Salamanca. I've done the Frances and Portugues and this seemed like the logical next step.
Third try because I missed the first two flights from London. I had taken the Queen Mary from NYC with my son (it wasn't too expensive - check it out!) and somehow my watch and phone got stuck in some mid-Atlantic time zone. By the time I arrived at Luton, the $49 Ryanair special tube Seville had already departed. The second missed flight was just dumb: I thought 5:55 meant the afternoon, not the morning. The third one, through Madrid, left an hour late and with the 1 hour time loss I made the connection with seconds to spare. But here I am.
I had been worried about the weather, starting so late. But the first few seconds outside the airport in Seville put my mind at rest. Delightful, light rain, people walking around in shorts.
It's quite dark outside. Good thing I brought my headlamp. From the looks of things, I'll be walking in the dark quite a bit. Great to get started!
Thanks to the others who have posted here about the VLDP for the information and inspiration.
Day 0 Seville
Day 1 Guillena
Day 2 Castillo Blanco
Day 3 Almaden de la Plata
Day 4 El Real de la Jara
Day 5 Monastario
Day 6 Fuente de Cantos
Day 7 Zafra
Day 8 Villafranca de los Barros
Day 9 Almendralejo
Day 9: Up at 6 am, brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen, out the door by 6:30. The night was cool and overcast. The batteries on my headlamp were dead and I couldn't read any Camino markers for the first couple of hours. I really appreciated the map on the Wise Pilgrim app - would have been lost without it.
Another day on a dirt road across endless plains under a big sky. A few sprinkles of rain. Billowing clouds mashed up against the horizon. Cool, pleasant, spectacular.
The agency I used to book my accommodations sent me to the town of Almendrajelo, which is about 5 km west of the Camino. Wikipedia says it's the site of a massacre of over 1,500 people, including women and children, during the Civil War, when Extremadura was strongly Republican and had alienated the big landowners by redistributing their land. The fascists herded local people indiscriminately into the bullfighting ring and shot them, forcing others to load the bodies onto trucks before they were shot themselves. Just 86 years ago, in 1936.
Like most English speakers, my knowledge of the civil war is limited to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. I need to go back and learn more about that bloody time, especially in the poorer regions like this one.
Today was a short day, only about 18 km. Done by noon. It was a drag having to walk so far off the Camino. Not sure why they didn't just send me to Torremejía, 27 km from Villafranca and directly on the Camino.
Tomorrow morning, rather than walk along the road all the way back to the Camino and then head north to Mérida, I bought a train ticket. It's a 20 minute walk to the station, then 21 minutes to Mérida. I'll spend a day in Mérida wandering around the Roman ruins.
Pilgrims today: 2. Outside the hostel in Villafranca at 6:30 am there were a couple of older French guys. We exchanged "buen caminos" and they headed off in the opposite direction, probably for breakfast. Later in the day I saw them again, tiny specks on the road far behind me. Zero interaction.