Camino de Santiago – Day 14
Walked from: Carrión de los Condes
Walked to: Moratinos
Date: 15 October 2017
Distance: 30 km

It’s amazing how quickly you can walk when you decide you really need a pee, there’s not a decent clump of trees or other substantial foliage as far as the eye can see, and the next toilet is 17km away. And after having walked that quickly, you might as well have a quick hot chocolate and carry on with getting the rest of the 30km stomp across the flat-ish but oddly beautiful plains of Spain done as quickly as possible – which was why I was the first to arrive at the small but perfectly formed San Bruno hostel in tiny Moratinos (population of 30 people) at around 1pm today.

Not that many other people turned up at the Italian-run hostel since I got here; it’s looking like a gloriously low key night in Moratinos, and with an almost empty dorm (oh what joy, what bliss) to boot. So let me count the ways I love this hostel:
1. There are as many phone chargers as there are people staying there;
2. I had real Italian food, cooked by real Italians tonight – an exciting day off from the delicious local food I’m eating the rest of the time;
3. It has a washing machine, and the sunny afternoon has dried out all the clothes that the aforementioned machine washed, so I have a bag full of clean stuff;
4. It has a lovely garden. With a water feature that the owners positively encourage you to sooth your aching feet in (effectively it stops all feeling in them by freezing them off);
5. It has separate bathrooms for the men and women (far from standard). With really good showers. That have places to put your stuff without it getting wet or requiring the shower-user to contort themselves in order to not flash anyone else who happens to be in the room at the time.

Also, the town has a load of those great 500 year old (or more) man made ‘caves’ (with doors) you see in this part of Spain, which were apparently dug out of the local clay by children during the winter months as a way of keeping them warm. And then used during summer months as a way of keeping the family’s food and booze dry and cool. They may not BE hobbit houses but they look very much like them – which, let’s be honest now, is kind of cool…

Oh, I also reached what I think is my halfway point on the 780km long Camino today. Whoop!!