This was an interesting Meseta walk! A 17km stretch with no towns and villages in between and our destination, Calzadilla – a very tiny village (population 60).
Everyday the news reports talk of temperatures rising across the country of Spain. We can feel it! Even the night time temperatures have risen by at least 5 degrees. The rooms in the hotels or apartments or albergues aren’t built for heat! They’re built for the more moderate temperatures the regions are used to. There are no fans in the rooms. All you can do is keep the windows wide open and hope for a breeze.
We leave the beautiful town of Carrion around 6.30am after breakfast of toast coffee and juice.
The cool morning air (around 14 degrees C) feels wonderful!
With no water taps and toilets on the way we hit the path prepared. By around 9.00 am we’ve covered around 7km. In a couple of km we should see the food truck and there’s hope for a coffee for John and something cold for me.
Soon we’re 450m from the village, according to Google maps, but there’s no sign of human habitation in sight! And then, we come over a slope and Calzadilla appears! Relief and joy that we can get out of the sun soon!!
My bag arrives a little after we do! More joy, to see my possessions!
After lunch and a nap we go to the church to see if there’s mass. Closed. Too tiny a place for a priest to come by. Notice the change in the architecture style. The brickwork instead of stone.
There was anxiety about today’s walk before we set out this morning, but it wasn’t so bad after all! It got HOT only after 10am and by then we had covered about 15km. Leaving early is the key!
Want to end with a reflection on how meditative the walks have been! Both John and I are podcast/ audio book/ music junkies! Its been almost 4 weeks and neither of us has listened to anything on the phone while we walk. Our focus is the path ahead. Our eyes looking at the stones, sand, rubble we walk on, the scrub we walk through, the jagged rocks we climb up or down… always checking where our next step is placed, ensuring we don’t misstep and hurt our feet or twist an ankle. Our ears are focused on the rustle in the grass, the crunch of the repetitive footsteps, sounds of cycles or walkers behind us wanting to overtake us on a narrow path we share, the sounds of the birds and buzzing of the insects! Our skin is focused on the cold, the heat, the breeze, the lack of it, the sweat streaming down when it’s humid. Our nose is taking in the smells of surrounding, recently cut crop, goat poop, the fragrance of flowers along the path, the yellow ones in the photo below, the most fragrant! No thoughts of what’s going on in the world and the chaos our leaders are working together to create!
A Couple of Indians Walking in Spain 
It sounds like you guys are in the zone!
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