Best night’s sleep yet for Sara. We left at 7:28, so not as dark as other mornings when we were out earlier. But it was a chilly 46° with a little breeze, thankfully not the strong winds of yesterday. We left town along a paved road which eventually became the unpaved, rocky Roman Road again. It’s quite flat today. We see lots of cornfields and farmland that’s been harvested and tilled for the next year’s crop.
With the sun just rising and spreading a golden hue over the wheat fields, these mornings are absolutely beautiful. But it was a long stretch, about ten miles, without any services, so Leo had prepared us a sandwich for the road. We had walked more than two hours before we stopped, found a place to sit on some rocks, and shared our “bocadilla.”
Along the road, we’ve talked a lot about metaphors on the Camino. This experience constantly makes you think in terms of metaphors. The Camino is both a road and a journey, both suggesting metaphors for our lives. Earlier, we saw the grapes ripening and soon to be harvested to make Rioja wine. We’ve seen fields of sunflowers and thick fields of corn. On this current section we see wheat, most of it already harvested – so we think about where we are in our own lives. We’ve been working for years, planting the seeds and tilling the fields, so to speak. And now that we’ve retired, we’re ready to reap the harvest. So far we are really enjoying the harvest feast.
Our 17km trek over the Calzada Romana took us to Reliegos earlier than we thought. It’s a small village with not much to do. But it is home to the “Elvis Bar,” featured of course in the film The Way, and it’s probably the most famous bar on the Camino. We were told we had to visit it this evening, since it’s just two blocks from our albergue. So we did, but the visit was short. It looks like a dive, with graffiti all over the building, country music playing inside, a rather grungy looking barman, and the inescapable smell of an ashtray permeating the whole place. OK, so we “did” the Elvis Bar. But not for long.
