Four days on the Meseta

I am in the small town of Puente Duero, with an amazing Roman bridge, about 11 km from Valladolid. I have had four hard days of walking on the meseta from Segovia, but fortunately there have been lots and lots of pine forests, which are very welcome for the shade. Tomorrow morning, I will say goodbye to my camino friends and take a detour to the city of Valladolid, where I´ve never been. I hope to find a better computer so that I can write more.

But these last four days have been really something --we have found albergues in all of the towns and have seen some amazing castles,churches, old walls, etc. One night we slept in a house where the gallegos used to sleep when they came to the meseta to do the harvest, in a town with an old church with a beautiful cloister (Santa Maria la Real de Nieva)

the next night we were in the old teachers´ house in a town called Coca with an amazing castle

another night in an albergue in Alcazaren, which run by the town but where the floor hadn´t been cleaned for at least a year. The apse of the Romanesque church, however, was a show-stopper.

 And tonight, we are in the town of Puente Duero, where there is a very nice albergue where we will have a communal supper.

So, I will try to write more tomorrow, as a tourist in Valladolid, where there is a phenomenal museum of sculpture, so they say, and a very nice historic center.