This was going to be a long day and sadly, even with my new shoes, the blisters on my heels refused to heal and husband had some problems too. It was either wait a day or send on our packs – we opted to pay 5 euro each and send our pack ahead 27 kilometres as the alternative was to stay another night. We left late again and found the wind was actually quite cold – at the last minute we grabbed out jackets out of the packs before heading off and Eduardo arranged for the Camino Facil team to pick our packs up. I actually had my puffer and my rain jacket on for quite a while before warming up.

The rain hit a little on and off and I realised I had a daypack with no pack cover and an umbrella that didn’t like the wind. We had a quick look in each little pueblo we hit to see if I could buy a cheap poncho to cover me for an emergency. You see even when we send our packs on I always keep a day pack and a shoulder bag with the things I cannot afford to lose like chargers, medicine kit, important papers, guide books etc. so getting wet could be a big problemo.

It was a long day there is no denying it, the evil in the sky could be heard and felt as the thunder in the distance roared across the plains. Drops of rain would start and stop and I was back to having people over take me because I just couldnt get those blisters to stay down. Whenever we stopped I undertook surgery on them doused them in alcohol and betadine and hoped for the best. My super healing ability saw them just heal over, fill with fluid again and grow back – thankfully they were not actually getting bigger! Thank heavens also that we didnt try this distance with our packs – it was a hard slog but we were feeling a lot better than the days before we arrived at Burgos. It was to be a 27 kilometre hike and neither of us would have made it with the full packs today.

I addressed the packs to the Albergue next to the main church in Carrion. This albergue was run by nuns. Little did I know husband would nearly die of fright when we showed up to claim the packs and he saw the nuns working in the kitchen. I cant sleep here he said – it just doesnt seem right. Never occured to me that sleeping in a Convent would be a problem but off we went to locate a room in a hostel across the square.

The other frenchman with the nice ass (in his pack) sat in the square resting and somehow communicated to us that Antony and Martin were down in the camp ground and a whole bunch of others were under a bridge somewhere having a fire and playing guitar.

I visited the pilgrim shop and the lady serving felt so sorry for me she went and grabbed a chair for me to sit in at the counter whilst I decided what to buy. I bought a poncho at last, some toothpaste, a small hair conditioner and a new lip sunblock. She was impressed with my Spanish language skills but again, I cannot be certain what else she was talking about!

We went back to our nice warm room and had a lovely nights sleep. No camping or sleeping under bridges for us!

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