Day 12 - Belorado to Villafranca Montes de Oca - 12km

Mick and the others left very early to get their bus and once again it was a sad to see them go, they had been such good company. The albergue served breakfast so I decided to have some before setting off as I wasn´t in a hurry. I had planned a very short day since it was only 12km to Villafranca where I intended to stop. After Villafranca there was a long stretch which looked very strenuous as it crossed three high hills one after the other in a remote area with nowhere to stay. I preferred to tackle this sort of terrain first thing in the morning rather than halfway through the day when I might be tired and really have to struggle to reach shelter.

After leaving Belorado it started to rain again, quite heavily, and my trainers, still wet from the previous day, became even wetter. I´d started off with dry socks but they became damp pretty quickly in the wet trainers even before the rain started and soon there was an audible squelch at each step I took. These couple of days were the only time I really had wet feet on the whole Camino. What rain I had at other times did no more than make my feet damp even though my trainers are not waterproof.

After a coffee break I kept going until I reached the albergue, which thankfully was open although it was only about mid-day. There was no-one there to book in with, in fact the whole place looked deserted until I went up some stairs and found my friend Annegrits using a computer to check her e-mails. According to her you just turned up, chose a bunk and signed in later with the hospitaleira when she arrived. A much better system than being made to queue up outside, sometimes in the cold and wet. I picked my bunk, left my rucksack and then went shopping for some food and soap while the shops were still open. Most days I arrived too late for this as they closed at two.

I managed to hang my washing out under cover as it was still raining on and off, and I also ate there although it was rather cold. After I sat and had some wine with Annegrits while we tried to chat. She was from East Germany and her English was self-taught, but we managed to communicate after a fashion. Our paths had kept crossing ever since I first saw her in Trinidad de Arre at the beginning of my Camino. Apart from the dinner that night we hadn´t spent much time together as her English was limited and she naturally gravitated towards the many German pilgrims she could speak to.

It is strange how people link up on this pilgrimage. I met Annegrits the day after I first lost touch with Mick, yet he later sent me a photo of his first communal pilgrim dinner before setting off from St Jean to cross the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, and she is sitting at the same table. This kind of coincidence happened time and again with different people, as if we were all interconnected in some way.