April 19, 2025, Fromista

Today was our first day of walking, in total we did almost 17 miles.

Malcolm’s first Camino marker

The day started out with a steep climb uphill, being my first day it was a struggle at times, but I took breaks as necessary. Just before the climb, we crossed a causeway that was constructed by the Romans.

Walking on the causeway that the Roman’s buildt across the marsh

From the top of the hill we looked back at our walk. Once to the top, it was a very steep slope down, but luckily it had been paived in concrete.

We still have 14 miles to go after this hill, but at least the grade would be much flatter than what it had been. The Camino stretched out in front of us as far as we could see, and that didn’t even get us to where the end would be today.

Out of nowhere we came across this tiny chapel, it should’ve actually been closed this time of year. It’s only scheduled to be open from June through September. But it was open, it is operated by an Italian Confraternity. It has 12 beds that people can use by donation, no electricity, and the only water is in the shower behind the building, in the evening there is no meal and at night they perform a ritual of foot washing. Definitely not as nice as the place we stayed last night.

Since today is the Saturday before Easter, many of the services were closed, we walked until we got to the town of Badilla de Camino.

The town was allowed to meter out its out justice by the regional government. This rollo was constructed for public punishment and hangings.

By the time we had gotten here, we had walked 12 miles, luckily this little town had an alburgue that was open that was serving lunch in the bar. The winds have been beating on us for the last 10 miles. It felt really good to have a couple of coffees con leche, and a sandwich. Not knowing if we’d be able to get dinner at our final destination tonight, I saved about a third of my sandwich in case there is no food to be had.

As we walked from Fromista we were rained on, this required breaking out out backpack rain covers and rain gear, and the winds still continued to blow. Most of the walk was adjacent to a 200 km long canal built to ship the wheat out that was grown in that area and irrigate the farmland.

Fromesta has definitely seen better days. We made it to our hotel and were warmly greeted by the woman behind the bar who gave us our rooms. As it turned out, dinner was available that evening. We got cleaned up, headed down to the lobby and had a beer and met another pilgrim from Australia, who shared our table at dinner time. Tomorrow night, Luke is staying at the same hotel that we are so we agreed to have dinner again together.