Day 4: From Zariquiegui to Lorca

The road to Santiago de Compostela is ancient, going back over a thousand years.  The original journey was not marked by signs and books.  The road connected the dots between parish churches across Spain.  The road leads from church, to church, to church.  Pilgrims learned “The Way” by listening to church leaders along the path.  They were guided to the next destination, with local people providing food and accommodation to the needy pilgrims.

Today, Spain is facing a re-awakening in its economy.  Many areas are bleeding industries, and people are struggling to find a meaningful living.  After centuries of helping pilgrims find The Way, the Camino has become a great economic engine for these communities.  There are businesses selling food, accommodation, souvenirs, and other items throughout The Way.  It’s very helpful.  They truly provide a service that’s needed and appreciated by the pilgrims.  What a great pay-back for centuries of care for the travelers on this route!

We started our day at 6:10 am, walking uphill to the windmills at the top of the ridge at Alto de Pedron.   Here, we find wind turbines in the background, and the inscription “Where the way of the wind crosses the way of the stars”.   This picture is from sunrise: super cold and windy.

Along the ridge lines are hundreds of wind turbines.  They're a sight to behold!  

Check out Paco's video of the turbines in action:

In theory, The Way is labelled clearly with a specific Camino sign: a scallop shell, with the large part of the scallop pointed in the direction of your destination.  Unfortunately, the artisans who painted, tiled, cemented and otherwise marked The Way didn’t pay too much attention to the direction of the scallops.  Sometimes they point in the right direction, and sometimes they were posted backwards.  So you can’t trust the scallop sign, you have to look for the yellow painted arrow that identifies the true direction.  It can be really confusing at times!

We walked through many small towns along our way, one more beautiful than the next.  We stopped for coffee at Puente La Reina, a medieval town meaning “Queen’s Bridge”  It was erected in honor of Dona Mayor, wife of Sancho III, to help pilgrims make the crossing of the River Argo at this important juncture.

You could see the wind turbines in the background for much of our path.

Much of our trail was over old Roman roads.  The Romans built much of the infrastructure in this region: roads, towns, fortifications, aqueducts.  So going over Roman roads sounds cool, right?  Not!  It can be really rough on your feet, as you can see below. 

We hoped to reach a town called Villatuerta.  We couldn’t make it.  Between the heat, the heights we needed to reach, and our physical abilities, we stopped after 26 km.  We had logged 10k steps by 7 am, and over 40k steps for the day.  We stopped in a small village called Lorca, and enjoyed a wonderful evening of fellowship with our fellow travelers.

Tommorrow we’ll need to go further.