Stage Twenty One– Mansilla de las Mulas to Leon

20.4  km

October 28, 2011

Arriving in Leon!

Today was a great day for walking although I did have a bit of a headache from the night before. I had first breakfast in a nice bar with Chris, Jenny, Gabriel, Nick and Kim. Jenny took our pictures as we were leaving on everyone’s cameras and off we went.  Chris and Gabriel had a faster pace and soon were out of site. I walked with Nick, Petra and Kim, We alternated talking with each other all day.

 We had three stops today, two of which were beer stops.  As we entered the long walk through the industrial area of Leon, Kim and I put our headphones on and danced along the path to pass the time and relieve some boredom. She would play air-drums and I learned to twirl my pole around my fingers, like my old baton twirling days!

 Again, many pilgrims skip this part and take a bus into the city but we walk it. There was quite a stretch beside the busy highway where the path was just slightly higher than the road and nowhere to pee. It was the beer! I had to go so bad that once Nick got ahead and the girls were behind me I found a small little bush. “Excuse me girls, I gotta go” and had to drop drawers right there along the path, being only partially hidden from the highway. Oh well!

We arrived at the outskirts of the old city where the huge municipal albergue was located. It was open 24-7 and many different groups stayed there. There were a number of high school girls’ basketball teams staying there and other non-pilgrims. Once settled, we were off to the centre of the old city of Leon to see the cathedral and get something to eat.

The first site of the Cathedral is so amazing as you wind through the narrow streets that open up to the Cathedral square. There are many pilgrims, tourists, and locals milling about. I decided I would go inside the Cathedral the next day and opted to go for a great pizza dinner with the others.  It was nice to see some familiar faces from the weeks prior, walking the streets of Leon. Evelyn from Australia, had dinner with us and took us to see the Gaudi (famous architect) building lit up at night.

Navigating the streets was very tricky in the old part of town, especially in the dark, with not the greatest of maps (or maybe it was the map readers..lol) We were lucky that Kim had her GPS on her i-phone, as we did get lost.  We eventually found our way back to the albergue. It was about a 4 km walk and I was not dressed for the cooler weather.

Now I was not really a fan of the GPS. It was like foretelling the future on the Camino. Kim would know where and how far to the next bar, town or albergue. I preferred to just come across places without the warning.  This night though, I was a GPS fan. I am not comfortable in big cities and my anxiety was up a little.

We ended up in a room with three, young, smelly, noisy, Spanish, male pilgrims. (lots of descriptors). Petra was almost vomiting from the smell and said she couldn’t sleep there. We discovered that the source of the bad smell was a guy’s towel that was hanging on the bunk right as you came in the door. Petra grabbed a hiking pole and picked up the towel with it and then stuffed it, without touching it, into a plastic bag. Then she tied it shut. Nick burned some incense he was carrying and that helped.

Off to bed and try to sleep in this busy, noisy albergue. Tomorrow is a rest day!