OUR WAY

 11th May 2025

Day 13 - Castrojeriz to Población de Campos

The long road to nowhere

Plenty of snoring last night - clearly not me, as I heard it. I slept until around 3am when Gaby's glasses case launched itself off the top bunk and woke me up. I didn’t get much sleep after that. Gaby, buried her head under her pillow with earplugs in, slept through the drama.

We were up and out by 5:30am, walking straight into rain before we’d even lost sight of the albergue. We stopped to suit up in full waterproofs, at which point it promptly stopped raining. Kept them on regardless - there was a biting wind and we weren’t in the mood to get cold.

The only climb of the day took us to a viewpoint, where it was still dark and visibility was nil. The descent was concrete path at first, turning into a soggy, muddy trail as dawn slowly made itself known. We crossed a river into Palencia province and stopped for breakfast in Itero de la Vega. From there it was more farmland and then a few kilometres alongside the Canal de Castilla, leading us to Frómista, where being Sunday meant everything was shut. We did find a bakery open, so we had lunch and picked up food for later.

Another day, same camino

Just 3km more brought us to Población de Campos. A sign led us one way to our albergue, another sign sent us back the way we came. A man on the street pointed us in the right direction, turns out he ran the place. We were the first guests to arrive, so we made good use of the empty facilities with showers and a quiet kitchen for cooking.

Spent the afternoon trying to plan the next few days. Not our finest display of logistics: we’ve ended up with nearly 40km to cover tomorrow and a night in what will be our priciest bunk bed so far.

Where we stayed
Albergue Municipal de Población de Campos
€10 bunk bed
Kitchen, hand washing, drying line, heating.
Our rating 7/10