Camino de Santiago day 15 and an added day 16

August 22nd

Yahoooooooooooo, in Leon in record time - here by 10.30am including a breakfast stop!

Got a hotel not far from the Cathedral, nice one, so have done a lot of washing - OK Isla, the Cathedral and the washing aren´t related - but well done on spotting the link !

Met a lovely couple from just outside Ottawa this morning - father and daughter team. They don´t know the Wilsons though !

The walk in was easy but un - exciting, except from the big lorries nearly catching you each time they passed. Not a safe walk in some places.

Leon is a nice city, we are heading into the Cathedral later this afternoon. It´s still very cold right now.

Kristie is staying here with us but Garrett is hoping to bash on a bit, he´d like to be in Santiago a few days ahead of us.

We have another easy day tomorrow so tonight we may stay up longer than 10pm !

Added later .....
We did indeed make the Cathedral, it was stunning, a particularly impressive piece of Gothic architecture.

Dinner was great, spent with Kristie and Garrett. Hamburger, chips and a bottle of vino tinto! Best in ages.

Missed the 9.30 Benediction with the nuns, my fault mum - KJ wanted to go !!!!!

23rd August
Leon to Villar De Mazarife, just 22km in about 4 hours.

Another easy day, was great to start off at 7.30am. Glad we did as the route out of Leon wasn´t easy to follow and we needed all the light we could get.

Once out of the city it was all scrub land and open fields, nice tracks under the feet so my blisters and sore shin have certainly cleared up a lot.

Have stopped at a small place with, at the moment, very few people. We think a lot of people have bashed on, it was an easy day.

 KJ in the village centre

It´s interesting the further into the walk you get, the more tactics come into play. We want to see a certain place, therefore 2 days before, we start planning days to reach it. Or, as we´re finding now, we´ve only 11 walking days left, feel stronger and so start thinking that we could make up more days and then hang out around Santiago for an extra few days. Go to the end of the world by bus maybe - another certificate stage !

We´re now the best part of the way through a bottle of wine, have machine washed clothing for the first time on the trip and still have a lot of the day left!

Didn´t mention it before, but KJ got bitten by bed bugs a few days ago ! Top half of his body only so we´ve had to de-louse him and some of his stuff !

Tomorrow is a longer day, about 35km.

Added later ........

So, KJ is the king of the washing machine - he produces clothes that for the pictures look like we have new ones ! IN others words his machine adventure ended in my new yellow sweatshirt now being a mustard colour and having shorter arms and his brown shorts are now grey .......

We had a lovely vegetarian Paella dinner .... well we had lots of vegetables anyway!

I now have a yellow way marking arrow on my hat - bought, not stolen from the local shop.