Camino Day 20, June 24: Mansilla de las Mulas (Mansilla Mayor) to Leon

Camino Day 20, June 24: Mansilla Mayor to Leon

Numbers: 12.4 miles per Garmin GPS. per Fitbit, 34,429 steps, 37 floors, and 294 active minutes.

First, thank you, dear friends and family for your empathetic/kind words in regards to our ill loved one. We are touched and humbled by your kindness.

Dave's voice

We begin our day in Mansilla Mayor, a trifle south of the Camino and a trifle west of the town we thought we were over-nighting at. This will turn out not to be cheating on the distance for reasons which will follow. The "hotel," all eight rooms of it, is a 200 year old house that has been upgraded to host wayfarers. The owner looks a little like the late actor Bob Hoskins.

The aforementioned fish dinner turns out not to be "with the family," but is brought in from across the street where the hotelier and his wife live, for us and us alone to eat. The ensalada mixta is very good and fish excellent as well as a bottle of chilled Rioja white (chilled, as we have learned, being the only way to enjoy Rioja whites), bread, grey cheese (Goat? Sheep? Mare?) on crackers, nuts, and tiny slices of mystery sausage we dare not ask about. The desert was home-made flan, not Scout’s favorite, but about as good as egg custard gets. All in all, an excellent meal and we weren’t upset when it cost 30€ plus another 6€ for the wine. These have usually run about 10€ per person with wine included; however, this dinner included refills on the ensalada and the fish, so…not bad.

As also aforementioned, we’re the only guests this night, so a room key seems a little unnecessary. It is, however the fifth or tenth or so room key we’ve gotten in Spain that has to be inserted into the lock from the inside of the room to lock it. And none of this sissy "waving" a card key at the door to unlock it – or even sliding it into a slot. These are keys like Edgar Allen Poe used.

The room was fine with no a/c and no screens on the windows, but good ventilation to cool us off. A good night’s sleep, breaking a long string of too-hot nights of tossing and turning.

A nice breakfast and we’re on our way with a detailed map of how to get to the Camino in the most efficient way, one that might even shave a kilometer off the day’s walk - prepared by the hotel owner. Uh, not so fast! The map - and the guy walked us half way to the first and only turn – was not quite what we thought and, as we headed east into the sunrise we began to think we were in for an even longer day than we’d initially thought. Que sera sera; we slugged our way through the usual farm land terrain with a fair amount of urban sprawl courtesy of Leon, one of the few Spanish towns named after one of the boxing Spinks brothers.

Today’s a holiday here, something to do with St. John and dedicated to Los Ninos. Unclear why, but a lovely day anyway. Lots of old churchy stuff, walls from the city’s fortified past, and bridges that have been restored to look like Roman originals. Speaking of roaming, although Leon is said to have a population of only 130,000, one can get lost – or at least be uncertain of one’s whereabouts. As we paused at Calle de las Judios, formerly an area where judo instructors taught students, to argue over our map and accost strangers who seemed to know nothing about their home town, an older guy interrupted, asking us in unintelligible language if we needed help. We did. "Do you want me to walk you to your hotel?" we imagined he said. Why, yes! Turns out he was a tourism volunteer, who knew almost no English, but did know his way around. He walked us there, chatting with Scout and not concerning himself with her inappropriate responses. "Si, limpio arboles sin gaseosa!"

We once again have a room in a former monastery, this one probably dramatically remodeled for modern tastes, though not so modern as to have a/c or screens on the windows. Still, there’s plenty of room, a big bed, and bar soap. What more could one want?

Since we’ve arrived early and had a short day, we take in some of Leon’ many sights, though we passed on the Burger King. A so-so lunch near the Los Ninos play area gave us ample time to lounge and make snarky remarks about passers-by. Why’re they all so foolish while we’re so wise? We do hit a couple of cultural high spots: an ATM and a bar where we get a bottle of chilled Rioja white. Leon’s okay!

Deb addendum

Tomorrow will be a long day. I made an error (me?) when I selected our next day's hotel. The suggested town for the day (13 miles away) didn't have hotels or ones that I thought were ok, so I elected to have us walk another 5 miles per Brierley to another town. Turned out, I misread his book (seriously folks, when I started doing these reservations the end of February, I wasn't as familiar with his maps). Instead of being 5 miles further, it's 9, so tomorrow will be a 22 mile day. For my marathoning friends, no need to tell us to suck it up. We will do that, but have made arrangements to have our backpacks transported to our next hotel for the first time. Good news is that the following day will be very short! So, there may not be a blog entry tomorrow. Not to worry....hopefully, we'll be back. :-)

Pretty flower of the day since the caption function doesn't seem to work on this photo. :-)

Signs today..the top two are from Leon. Sadly, there are very few intact ones like the one on the top right. The glass is shattered on many.

A few pictures from Leon

And, our hotel and views from it

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