Sahagún to El Burgo Ranero

May 26 - Sahagún to El Burgo Ranero
Well, we sure started this day out wrong! Our albergue offered only 'twinkie' breakfast - nasty sweet things in packages so we declined and left with only a cup of coffee saying we could get breakfast somewhere else on our way out of town. Then for some reason we decided not to since the next community was only about 4 kilometers away. So we made our way out of town on the path beside the road and sure enough reached Calzada de Coto in record time only to find that the bar was closed because it was Sunday. We had gone almost a kilometer out of our way to get there and started back to reach the path we wanted when a little old man stepped out of his house and asked us why we were going back. We explained but he assured us that we didn't have to do that and that if we kept going there was a path that would get us back on the one we wanted. Sure enough, it all worked out exactly as he had explained that it would and we got back on our path fairly quickly.

But now we had an extra 6 kilometers to go before we would get breakfast and that was only IF there was an open bar at the next town. So we headed off with all of the energy we could muster reminding ourselves and each other never to do that again. We have fallen a bit careless as open bars are so readily available here in Spain and we didn't even have a peanut between us. By the time we had reached our next possibility for food, at the 10.5 kilometer mark we were starving and not feeling that well. But luckily there was an open bar right at the beginning of town and we gulped down orange juice, a bocadillo with ham and cheese, a tea, a banana and an apple. A bocadillo is a hunk of French bread about ten inches or a foot long with no butter, oil or dressing of any kind with (in this case) some ham and cheese in it. They're dry and not that great but today they tasted wonderful!

I still felt really low energy and  fairly sick from gulping down all of that food on an empty stomach and didn't regain my energy for about an hour and a half. Lesson learned! Today's walk was another treadmill but not as bad as the one a couple of days ago. It is an odd experience though to be able to see people for so far ahead. We were glad to pull into town today though and settle ourselves in a small but very busy hostal, right across the road from a somewhat grim looking albergue. Now we're clean, we've eaten and are ready for bed. What luxury.