Day 5

Via de la Plata

Sunday 1 April 2012

Day 5

El Real de la Jara to Monesterio. 22km.

One of the joys on finishing a hard day's walking on the Camino is to find a nice quiet albergue where you find a small dorm with two bottom bunks and you dump your gear before heading for the well equipped kitchen for a hot cup of tea. This is then followed by a piping hot shower to ease the tired muscles. This we found when we arrived in Monesterio, what luxury. When we entered the town it began to rain and we donned our ponchos then felt impatient about finding a place for the night. There was along the road into town, a capital A, beside the arrows indicating an albergue but all the books had said the hostel here was closed. We came to a hotel, the Hotel Moya, which had a tempting offer of a room, dinner and breakfast for E25 each, we decided to see if there was an actual albergue or something else to compare. We found the albergue which was new and run by the church, it had twelve beds and provided free tea and coffee, all for a donation.

Last night we both slept very well so it turned out to be good decision to have picked that place. After we finished playing cards Moira had gone down to Silvia's room and used the microwave to make a drink and fill the flask with hot water for our breakfast. She got down there just in time as they were preparing for bed. When we finished breakfast and got packed up we went down to use the microwave to fill the flask up again for lunch.

We started off at 7:50 today and the roads were wet, it had rained overnight, it was still cloudy as we left the town on to the trail and there was more rain coming. The route for the first 12km was along a wide gravel country lane through the familiar estates with the paddocks of oaks and herds of cattle grazing. This morning we heard our first cuckoo of the spring then we heard more and more as we continued. The rain did come on after about an hour and we got our ponchos out, it lasted until we had our stop for a break after two hours, then the sun came out and patches of blue sky was showing.

At the end of this section the route twisted and turned around the junction of the motorway and the N630 road. There was a big hostal at the junction that hadn't been mentioned in any of our books, it would have been a convenient place to stay instead of El Real (only another two hour's walking),then by-pass Monesterio to save a day, and also because there was the doubt about accommodation in Monesterio. There was a small chapel shortly after the junction, Ermita de San Isadoro, where the retinue transporting the body of Saint Isadoro to Leon from Sevilla stopped on route for a rest. There was a photograph in Cicerone of this chapel, a beautiful white painted building but what we saw was a dreary grey box covered in graffiti.

This first part of the walk from the junction was a smooth path through a forest of eucalyptus trees. It was close to the N630 but when it finished we were walking along the edge of the road. It wasn't too bad as the traffic was light on this old road after the construction of the motorway. Soon we left the N630 and on to a quiet road running below the motorway, this became gravel as it started to climb a long hill to a picnic area on the top at Cruz del Puerto. I looked back down the hill to admire the view but it was shrouded in mist, the rain would soon be on again. We stopped here for a drink of water before the final kilometre into Monesterio which we could see over the crest of the hill.

The albergue started to fill up in the afternoon and was soon full, there were only twelve beds. More people were turning up until dinner time but had to be turned away, and I don't understand where they are coming from, we hadn't seen them at any of the other overnight stops. Another good thing about the albergue, we eventually discovered, was that there was Wi-Fi. I managed to get my blog updated and nearly a week's newspapers downloaded.

We were in our beds before 9:00 but I didn't sleep very well. I had been drinking coffee all day and was up to the loo nearly every hour, this wasn't helped by the guy in the bunk above me tossing and turning and somebody snoring, I thought it was Moira but she said it was from the bunk above her.