Espinosa del Camino

3 Sept 2025

Well, I slept better than I thought I would last night, inches away from strangers. Ear plugs and an eye mask helped. Last night, all 40 pilgrims went to a mass in the church where we were blessed and then we headed back up through the choir of the church to the hostel to eat a communal meal of salad and local stew “Patatas Riojanas”; potatoes with tomatoes and chorizo. The most amusing was we all formed an assembly line and washed and dried all the plates, silverware, and glasses after dessert, laughing and talking in several languages.

Today’s walk was not particularly exciting as it was mostly dirt road next to a highway. 15.4 miles/ 24.6km in the sun and the pretty strong breeze. My hat blew off my head at one point but the breeze felt so good on my sweaty forehead I left it off for a short while. There was one moment early this morning that made me laugh though. The sunflower fields are past bloom but bowing their heavily seeded heads. One of them gave me a smile.

I passed through the town of Beldorado today which had -wait for it- a cool old church. Almost all the towns have their own church; I don’t know if it will ever become tiresome to see them though! There were humungous storks nests built all atop this particular church which added an interesting architectural element…

Tonight’s albergue is in the tiny enclave (I would not even call it a town) called Espinosa del Camino which translates to “thorny path”. It makes me think of the many wild thorny blackberry bushes all along the Camino and how several of them have grabbed a hold of my clothing or skin…I got back at them by eating some of their berries! Casa Las Almas is a 5 bed hostel run by Uli and Sabine- German expats who have done the Camino and now host pilgrims. I get to use my German language skills, although I have already apologized for my habit of accidentally throwing a Spanish word into a German sentence or vice versa. They must be stored together in the “non-English” drawer inside my brain.