April 23, 2025, Mansilla de las Mulas

It was a long walk today, just short of 15 miles. My accommodations last night were very nice considering how small the town was. I had breakfast with Mary and Sue, the 2 ladies from London that were on their 14th year of walking the Camino, as they have gotten older the like to come twice a year for 2 weeks. Since they are older they walk at their own pace and do not make reservations.

These 2 ladies know about everything about life on the Camino

They were out the door before me, I still needed to finish getting my pack together and rushed to put my shoes on. My walk out of town was very quiet, I only saw one local that was awake in his house.

It was a fast walk to the edge of town, and soon I would be walking on the side of a country road.

Eventually the paved road would go away and the Camino was a dirt and rock path for many miles crossing several water systems for the wheat farms.

Much of the walk today will occur on old Roman roads, mostly rocky. I am always excited at the idea of being on such a road, but the real thing is different. It was time to break out my trekking poles to give me a little bit more stability.

Eventually I caught up with Mary and Sue, they had stopped to listen to the birds. Mary gave me a demo of her phone app that can identify the birds, there were at least 4 different birds making sounds, I downloaded it on the spot. I told them that I enjoyed meeting them, today is their last day to walk on this trip, I continued on and they were in my rear view.

Well that’s what I thought, but after awhile I realized that I had forgotten to apply my blister tape and second pair of socks. I was looking for someplace to sit and take my shoes off. Soon I found a broken part of a brick wall to sit on.

By the time I got my feet tended to, Mary and Sue came passing by. Next I caught up with them they had stopped for a snack break while sitting on their backpacks, another veteran move. We talked again and they gave me a biscuit, a.k.a. cookie, they had bought, for the final time we said our goodbyes. So far today I had only seen five other people on the road, Mary, Sue, 2 other pilgrims and a local on his dirt motorbike that passed me while walking. It was a long quiet day, looking at the fields going by and checking from time to time to make sure that I have not gone off the Camino as there was not as many markers.

Dead sunflowers

It went on and on, some people choose not to walk in Meseta because the monotony, but I was looking forward to this as would be quiet time just to think. Closer to Reliegos the landscape change just a little bit.

After hours of not seeing anyone, a couple came into view behind me. As they got closer, I could tell it was Christine and Ian that I met at my hotel the night before, Christine was injured, but somehow she walked faster than Ian in myself. We got to a fork in the road we could continue on straight to Reliegos or take a turn towards our goal for the day. I took up Ian on his offer to join them for a beer in Reliegos. As we got closer you could see all the little underground storage places, bodegas, that individual families have for cool storage, it is unique to this area.

Reliegos is a very very quiet town, we found a bar and got a table in the shade. From there, we saw more pilgrims walk into town from the traditional route than we had seen all day long on our Roman route. It was now time to walk our final leg into Mansilla de las Mulas, we had about 4 miles to go. Now we would be walking on a path adjacent to the road, not as quiet or beautiful.

Mansilla de las Mulas was a walled city in its day, I stayed on the Camino through one of the old gates on the way to my disappointing “hotel“.

I was spent from the day, I checked in at about 4:00 and decided to get some food before anything else. I sat in the back courtyard of the building and had a very good burger and 2 beers. Afterwords I returned to my room for a shower. I discovered 2 things, my forgetting to apply my blister tape and use my second pair of socks resulted in my first Camino blister and second my hotel did not have hot water.

Tomorrow I walk 11 miles to Leon, I plan to leave early.