Last night supper was served in front of the roaring fire and we asked for our left over chicken to be made into sandwiches for breakfast. It was a lovely warm evening with very friendly hosts in a particularly nice albergue with only four others staying. We were allocated a sleeping cubicle with four beds, all to ourselves. It was warm and private and I slept until gone 7:00 am, what bliss!

In the morning I helped Ella tend to her rotting feet and we didn’t emerge from the albergue until after 8:30 am, and slotted into the stream of passing pilgrims (much like the lonely caterpillar that I had ejected from the procession during my training walk).

Ella had a very slow start and many people passed us, which is very unusual. Normally we pass everyone in sight. It was a beautiful morning, with blue sky and sunshine, the first time for many days. I said to Ella that we had had one day of hail and snow, two days of howling wind and one day of pouring rain. She replied that in other words 25% of our journey had been rubbish weather (actually those weren’t her exact words, but I wouldn’t want to offend anyone by repeating what she said). I responded that rather 75% of our journey had been glorious, and sang her the first verse of ‘always look on the bright side of life’ dada, dada……….

It was so delightful after our days of grey that I launched into a chorus of ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ (only the first verse because that is all I know), and immediately realised that I was once again imitating my Dad.

Just before we reached the town of Sahagún we came across a pretty church and a few metres further on discovered that we were at the official half way point of the camino (from the spanish starting point of Roncesvalles, 27 km after our start in St Jean Pied de Port).

After walking a further 50 metres or so I thought that we should have taken photos of ourselves this historic point of our journey, but neither of us could be bothered to walk back to the monument so we just posed where we stood

The town of Sahagún was very interesting with many attractive albergues

On leaving the town we had to make a choice of path, either passing through a variety of villages or taking a very lonely route with no sign of human life for miles. We meant to take the first, but actually took the second. It was a long walk over a slightly muddy sand path through cultivated and scrub land where we only saw two other pilgrims during a couple of hours, before finally reaching the village of Calzadillos de Los Hermanillos where I decided I had had enough for the day and called a halt to proceedings.

We were told by other pilgrims that the municipal albergue was freezing and unattractive so I decided it was time we stayed in a hotel, so here we are sitting in a comfy lounge with a roaring wood stove, a jovial host, a large private bedroom with ensuite and a rather higher charge than the normal 5-€ to 8-€ fee at the albergues.