El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas

May 27 -El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas
A good sleep which set us up for a 19 kilometer walk today. It's still flat and straight with a little curve or bump here and there and the path is right beside a secondary road. But there was little traffic and the fields to both sides are full of green wheat and wild flowers, the birds are singing all day long and the path is easy. It still seems longer when it's so straight and somehow it's harder on my body with the bonk, bonk on the same part of the bones and using the same muscles in a limited way than it is going uphill. But it was a beautiful day in spite of a bit of rain and we got to our albergue just after lunch.
Mansilla de las Mulas is a quaint little city with lots of little plazas every block or two. We walked around a few blocks and met the bar crowd sitting in chairs all over the city, chatted a bit, ate ice cream (me not Suzy) and wandered back to the albergue for tea. This city was once surrounded by walls that were about nine feet thick and there are still remains of them around the city. It's an interesting place to wander around even though we don't really need any extra walking at this point.

Our albergue is called The Garden of the Camino and has a nice open, grassy courtyard where everyone is currently sitting. It's getting chilly though and we'll soon be heading indoors for food and bed. We're in a dorm with 24 beds on one side of a wall and about 20 on the other side of the wall so it might be a bit of a noisy night. After our room for two in a hostal in El Burgo Ranero it'll be quite a change. But we seem to need to get out of albergues every now and then and just have our own bathroom and some peace and quiet. I think that makes us not 'real' pilgrims by some definitions.

Tomorrow it's into Leon - another good sized city with a wonderful cathedral.