Day 68, Monday 21/5 (Pilgrim Spotting):

We set off today into the Spanish countryside, with the aim of following the Camino de Santiago walking trail. The Camino, for the most part, runs on or near minor roads and is very well signposted. While travelling the route we kept a tally of the number of walking and cycling pilgrims we spotted, as well as attempting to find the occasional geocache. 

View of Canal de Castilla from first geocache find.

However the geocaching really was not meant to be with only one find out of six – geocaching is clearly not a hobby that the Spanish take too seriously. We stopped for some lunchtime tapas and a drink at El Burgo de Ranero. By the end of the day we had spotted in excess of 200 pilgrims. Our hotel was in the rather unattractive village of Osorno la Mayor, which no doubt lost a considerable portion of its charm when a new road was constructed through its centre, effectively bisecting it. As it transpired, our hotel was no better, making it the only blot on booking.com’s copybook. Poor Philip was sent up and down to no less than two supposedly triple rooms, both of which turned out to be double rooms. It was on the third attempt that the receptionist was able to guess the correct room. It was interesting to note that a group of Italian cycle-Pilgrims had exactly the same issue. The room was fine in the end. The next issue was the wifi, not working of course. We tried to explain to her that it was not working and asked whether she could fix it. She was convinced that there was no issue, eventually showing us her computer screen, displaying the usual ‘no Internet connection’ screen. After this shemozzle, she did give us a free (or so we thought) drink in the hotel’s bar. Wanting to get out, we headed into the centre to try and find somewhere to eat, as the prospect of dining at our hotel was not overly attractive. Unsurprisingly we were not able to find much, just one bar, in which we had a drink. From here, we determined that the only nearby restaurant was indeed the one at our hotel, so it there that we ate. As it panned out we had a very nice meal of young suckling lamb, very nice.