I left Moratinos at 08:40. It was a foggy morning. I talked for an hour or so talking to an Italian guy, Marco. He was part of a trio along with an older Spanish guy named Francisco and an Argentine guy named Victor who resembled Anthony Bourdain. We walked through the hamlet of San Nicolas del Real Camino. Then, I went ahead and walked with Mario, who left St. Jean Pied de Port on the same day as me. Eventually we got to Sahagun, which is a large town for the area. By this time it started to rain. I thought about stopping for lunch at a restaurant in town to escape the rain, but instead I just decided to keep walking. The temperature must have been right around the freezing point because there would be intervals of freezing rain and snowflakes.
The walking was easy, mostly flat and on a gravel path along a road, but the cold and wetness made it a very miserable day. The rain was blowing sideways. No matter how good your rain gear was, eventually you would get wet. The gravel path was flooding in many places. I moved over to the ajacent road to avoid having to walk through water and inch or two deep on the gravel path. I pushed on and made it to the town of Bercianos del Real Camino. The town was dead. I could not find any bars or restaurants open to warm up in. I made the final push to El Burgo Ranero. Just before town, Marco, Francisco, and Victor caught up to me. We checked into the municipal albergue, which was a building made of mud. There was a €5 donation. There were seven other people there. Five I knew from the previous night in Moratinos. The two I did not know were a Korean couple who just stayed for a couple hours and then left on the next train to Leon because they were so miserable from getting soaked and walking in the rain all day.
The remaining pilgrims six pilgrim, including myself, spent the next few hours warming up by the wood-burning stove and drying off our clothes. For dinner, I walked across the street to a bar called Piedras Blancas. It seemed they were only serving beer and tapas, so I left and went down the street to a bar called El Peregino. There I had a 1906 beer and a two course dinner: potato salad with tuna, followed by a veal steak with French fries. The food was not the best, but it felt good to eat after a miserable day.
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| A pilgrim statue in Sahagun. |
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| The path leaving Sahagun. |
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| Finally reaching El Burgo Ranero. |
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| El Burgo Ranero. |
