Day 17 - Fromista to Carrion De Los Condes

Today was scheduled to be a short walk of 19km and therefore we stayed in Fromista for breakfast at our hotel.

I have been able to refine my Spanish sufficiently that I now get my coffee exactly the way I want it. Today my coffee was perfect. Best in Spain so far.

The hotel / restaurant that we stayed in last night turned out to be better than our first impressions.


The bed was quite comfortable and although the room was warm at first, it cooled down during the night.

Our dinner at the hotel was a typical pilgrims menu but we did upgrade the complimentary bottle of wine to a bottle of 2008 Montecillo Crianza, which was quite nice. 



The only grief that we had with the hotel is that they seemed to have a double standard. First class and prompt service for locals and something else for visitors.

Anyway, on to our walk.

It was dead boring.

A long straight walk alongside a relatively flat country road.

The view in front of us, or behind us, or to the side of us, was the same all day.

There were a couple of towns along the way to break the journey.

The first town, which looked the most inviting, had a bunch of party goers who were drinking at 8am. Not sure if this was a continuation of the night before or whether they had just started for the day. They invited us to get involved. A few pilgrims did but we opted not to.

The second town did not look open for business and neither did the third. 

We therefore decided at the third town to get a coke from a machine. Immediately after we did this we found a cafe open for business. Too late - keep on walking.

As a result of the boring walk, and lack of inviting towns to stay in, we had very little stops today and made a good pace. We completed the 18.5km in 3h07m for an average pace, door to door, of 5.9km/hr. A new record for us, which may be hard for us to better.

Carrion de los Condes is a larger town and is very nice.

Once we got to town, we wondered around for awhile looking at shops and buildings and then had a hamburger. Our first hamburger for a couple of weeks. It was OK but not flash.

We then went in search of our hotel, which is on the other side of the river Carrion, outside of town.

The Hotel Monasterio San Zoilo is housed inside a modified Monastery.

It is lovely and our room is quite large. The walls are very thick and the temperature in the building is perfect.

As we were arrived at the hotel, we found a large number of people dressed in the finery also arriving for a wedding. We felt a little under-dressed!!

We look forward to exploring the town and monastery further this afternoon.