The campsite where we stayed for two nights feels a bit in the middle of nowhere. 'A' campsite, along 'a' motorway, along 'a' canal and 'a' railway line... Everything goes by at full speed here. But for us it makes so much sense to be here, having walked 67 stages and arrived here. And in this small village, if you can even call it that, it's unpaved streets, with houses with high walls or tall plants around their plots and a few businesses, people live for whom this is home, who grew up here and will stay here. The roar of cars, trucks, motorhomes and trains is such a contrast to the quiet of life that takes place here. Just a few meters apart is a completely different sense of time. It was lovely to spend a day at the campsite and enjoy this peace and quiet, perhaps made extra so by the din in the background. But like everyone else zooming past here, we also move on again, albeit at snail's pace with our little house on our backs. Rain is predicted for nine o'clock this morning, but the sky is still pretty clear. We were a little worried about having to take down the tent in the rain, but thankfully that isn't the case. Once you're hiking, some rain doesn't really matter, but with packing it's really a burden. In the sunshine and actually with quite good weather, we leave the campsite, towards the motorway and the canal we are crossing.
We turn left onto the wide path we left the day before yesterday. The pretty path is flat and the verges are green. The landscape gets fresher and fresher as we get further north, especially here along the canal. There are many fishermen busy putting traps with meat in the water. Some are so busy they don't notice us, others wave politely and shout "Buen viaje!" Have a good trip! On some stretches, the canal is a bit lower than the fields and the highway next to it, there are steep slopes with bushes and grass. Dozens of rabbits hop across the slopes and we continue to see many rabbits in the stretches further on along the route as well. If they always used to be all over Spain in these numbers, it's not surprising that hundreds of years before Christ the Phoenicians called Spain 'Saphan'. Saphan meant 'rabbits' and was later bastardised to Hispana and later España.
All in all, we walk uphill a bit, as we encounter a number of locks with quite a bit of elevation change. This canal from the 18th century was a real masterpiece at the time, very modern. It was built to transport grain and other agricultural products from the vast Spanish plains to the port city of Santander to sell to other European countries, but mostly to ship overseas. We pass yet another set of dilapidated transfer sheds today. The walls are often still good, as if they were still quite new, but the roofs and windows are missing. Taking a peek inside, all we see is dust, clutter and pigeons. More often they are large pigeon lofts nowadays. Lucky birds, they have nice houses in beautiful places!
Fortunately, at nine o'clock it hasn't started raining and when we walk the last few meters along the canal near the village of Villamuriel de Cerrato, it's still dry, but around us it's quite cloudy. In the village we do some quick shopping and from here we head a little more northeast. We leave the canal behind and have to make do with a busy, wide road along industry for several kilometers. We walk for kilometers past factories and sheds of a Renault factory and trucks drive in and out. In front of us and to the left, the sky starts to turn pitch black and it thunders heavily. Counting the time between the flash and the thunder, we count five seconds, so the thunder is a good kilometer and a half away. We see the rain falling from the clouds like a dark curtain. A little further on, we can turn off the main road onto a dirt road that passes under a railway. We walk at a brisk pace to get to the tunnel before the rain. Fortunately, the clouds shift along with us as we walk forward to the left and we get away fine. Still, just to be safe, we take a break at the tunnel so that we can take shelter if it does start raining. At first we sit in the sunshine, then it starts to rain a bit and we move to the tunnel. But as soon as it dries up again, we move back to sit next to the tunnel out of the wind. It blows very hard in the tunnel, and it starts to cool down considerably.
After the break, the weather looks more cheerful, until half an hour later we look behind us and the sky is quite dark again. To the right, it also starts to get very cloudy and in no time it's dark all around us. It flashes and thunders and the curtains of rain come closer and closer. It's still about 4 kilometers to our final destination and we really don't fancy getting wet at the end of the stage. We were already walking fast, but now we are walking even faster. Almost at a run, we hike along the paths towards Magaz de Pisuerga. We can already see our hotel and if we could walk straight to it, we would be there in no time. But alas, we have to walk another 3 kilometers or so to get there. We go under the motorway several times and walk on a major road for a while before we reach the Hospedium. They're 3 cramped kilometers and we often look back to assess whether we'll make it or not... As we stand in front of the entrance under the canopy, it starts to storm really hard and we are inside just before it breaks loose. Thankfully, we made it! Today we were really very lucky a couple of times... We don't gamble on it, but hope it stays that way for a while, as there is still quite a bit of rain forecast for the next few days. We'll keep the rain covers and raincoats within reach anyway. For now at least, we are happy to be dry inside and enjoy the thunderstorm from behind glass, which is much nicer than walking through it anyway ;-)
