Day 16 Heading for the Hills

Leon is the last city before Santiago. Whilst the cities have had their advantages (like decent hotels) I’m pleased to be leaving the cities and plains behind and to be heading up into the Galician mountains in the next few days. On the road out of Leon though there was one last treat – this massive palace, St Marks – which is covered with the scallop device. It is by the bridge that would have been the last stop before leaving the city gates so it is a kind of nice, “thanks for dropping by”, to the pilgrims who have visited Leon.

Scallop Central

I fell in with a couple of Americans on the way out of town. One started opining that he had had such great hopes for Obama, but all of Obama’s brilliant plans had been thwarted by the “conservatives”. At least we now know it’s all the fault of Fox News. Funnily enough I didn’t feel the need or the urge to have an argument with him – perhaps the Camino is having an effect on me?

On politics, Spain was cerrado again today, this time for the May 1st holiday when we celebrate international socialism. I’m not sure which particular aspects we are celebrating; Stalin’s 30 million dead in the 30’s, Mao’s 60 million in the sixties or maybe Pol Pot’s 2 million in the seventies? Those people who still hold to this creed always say “but ah, we haven’t tried true socialism yet”. I don’t know about that but I reckon that when you’ve clocked up a nine figure body bag count it’s probably time to stop.

On a much happier note just outside Leon, I came across this bell-tower. The storks had made some delightful additions to the building. The stork is a very beautiful creature!

Stork Central

After my disastrous decision a couple of days ago to take the scenic, rather than shorter, route on a stage, today I elected to take the more mundane traipse along a main road. It was a bit over 20 miles and I’m glad I did as about 2 miles out of Hospital del Orbigo, today’s destination, I felt the tendons in my left leg start to seize up (it’s a new medical emergency everyday on this blog). I therefore limped into town, needing a beer just to get to the hotel.

Hospital is quite a historic site famed for its inordinately long bridge. There was a bloodbath here between Swabians and Visigoths in 452 and another punch up later between Moors and Christians. The most famous claim to fame was however from 1434 when Don Suero, a knight from Leon, got turned down by a local damsel. Being a proud knight, he did the only thing possible; no, not have a good honest look at himself and think what was the barrier to true love; no, not change his aftershave and stop insulting the damsel’s friends; no, not get drunk and pretend that he never fancied her that much anyway; of course he vowed to defend the bridge for a month. Other knights heard about this and a lot of jousting happened on the bridge; 300 lances were broken; and Don Suero returned to Leon with his honour intact. History doesn’t record what the girl thought of all this drama – I think it’s safe to surmise that she probably thought I’m glad I’m not getting hitched to that muppet.

Bridge Central

It really is a very long bridge when you’re limping. I made it to my hotel – which is really grotty (ever seen a hotel with a petrol station next to reception?) and inspected the damage. I’ve decided that I’ll do my shortest ever walk tomorrow to the next town – Astorga – and give the leg a bit of a chance to recover. According to my rough schedule I’ll be climbing up to 5000 feet over the weekend and it would be awfully embarrassing not to be able to get down the other side…

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