Day 15 - Hornillos Del Camino to Castrojeriz

Day 15 (14th day of walking).

After a great night at the Hotel Consulta De Isar, where Vicki reckons that she had her best night sleep in Spain, we had a great breakfast and our host then drove us the 3km back to Hornillos Del Camino to recommence the Camino trail.

What great service!!

At dinner last night the host asked if we wanted to trade up our wine to a better vintage, which we did. We had a 2009 Pago De Carraovejas Crianza, which was superb.

The weather today was clear and cool. Perfect for walking and sight-seeing.

We climbed several hills today to reach several flat plateaus in succession where we spent most of days walk walking amongst grain crops along with some sunflowers and lots of windmills.

Mid-walk we reached the village of Hontanas where we stopped for coffee and bananas.

We then walked along a valley parallel to a number of reforested hillsides of pine.

Finally we reached the ruins of the Convent of San Anton about 2km before our final destination at the town of Castrojeriz.

Castrojeriz is a larger town with a couple of banks, pharmacy, small supermarket, hairdressers, and a number of pubs and restaurants.

Our Hotel, the Pastrada, is located in the centre of town and is affiliated with the nearby Restaurant El Mason where we enjoyed a great lunch. Vicki had Paella, breaded Anchovies and Cream Caramel and I had salad, chicken and chips and milk curds with honey. All washed down with a bottle of Vino Tinto.

I wonder what is on the menu for dinner?!!

The host is wonderful and has allowed us to use the hotel washing machine and clothesline. We dashed him 5 Euros for this.

Later today we will walk to the local convent as they are supposed to have great cookies for all visitors.

It is also garlic festival month so we will try to find some more garlic.

We see very few of the people who started the Camino at St Jean Pied de Port with us, but are starting to meet a number of new people who started the walk at different times or different starting points.

In total, our walk today was 20.0km and we did this in 3h51m for an average speed, door to door, of 5.2km/hr. same speed as our record pace of yesterday but today we spent time drinking coffee at the midpoint.