Thursday, 2 May 2024
Walking from Zamora to Montemarta
19.7 kilometers

We are starting the walk today after a day in Zamora to rest and acclimate after traveling from the U.S. The original plan for yesterday was to take items we do not need during the walk and send them to Ivar (who runs the Camino Forum) in Santiago de Compostela where, for a small fee, he will hold the package until we arrive. Unfortunately, May 1 is Labor Day in Spain, a national holiday, and almost all businesses are closed, including Correos, the Spanish Post Office.

So this morning, we walked to the main Correos office in Zamora and were there when they opened at 8:30. We were helped by a very nice lady who, despite some language challenges, made sure we had everything in order to send the package to Casa Ivar in Santiago de Compostela. The cost was 20 Euros, and the package will arrive in two days, much, much faster than our walking speed.

The company who booked our accommodations for this pilgrimage walk, Pilgrim.es, did not find suitable accommodation in Montemarta, so once we arrive, we are to call Isodoro Rodriguez in Zamora, he will come to Montemarta, pick us up, and leave us back at the same hotel in which we are staying in Zamora. Tomorrow morning, he will return us to Montemarta so we can continue our pilgrimage walk where we ended today.

Today’s walk was fairly short at just under 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) and relatively flat, so a good first day. Since we have accommodation booked, we do not have to hurry. We did walk for just over 4 hours and 10 minutes at a decent speed, averaging 4.7 kilometers per hour. That included a few short breaks along the way. Here is a map from Samsung Health showing the walk today next to a depiction of the elevation superimposed on a graph of my speed. It is unclear what the few up and down “spikes” in the graph represent. I’m also going to see if the map and elevation displays on Strava are better than Samsung Health.

The morning started very cool, even though we did not start until about 9:30 AM. It was 4.4 degrees Celsius (about 40 F) when we started walking after sending off our package at Correos. Near our hotel, we came upon an intersection where a different Camino route heads more directly west to meet the Camino Portugese. We are continuing more directly north on the Via de la Plata, so we continued straight at this sign:

Walking through the outskirts of Zamora we saw a Camino marker indicating 279 kilometers (173 miles) to Santiago de Compostela. I got a photo of Dan looking very serious and Ron by the way marker.

I’m not sure how Ron’s hands were warm; he does have gloves. I wore my gloves, as did Dan. We were soon out of town, away from traffic, and after passing a roundabout, we left the highway and walked on secondary, dirt roads. The Camino path passes large fields of canola in bloom.

The Camino route north of Zamora passes a very expansive solar farm, much larger even than that I saw last year south of Salamanca.

After passing the solar farm and walking in vast fields of cereal crops, I noticed high-speed rail tracks in the fields to our left. No trains passed by today as we were walking.

Dan took a photo of me near the high-speed train tracks. I am looking a little tired, and also it feels just plain cold today. Out here in the expansive fields, there are no trees to block the wind, and there are frequent cold winds here.

We crossed over the train tracks on a bridge, and I took this photo of the double-track high-speed rail line. Spain, like France and Germany, has really embraced high-speed rail. I’ll be on the express, high-speed train from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid after we finish our pilgrimage walk.

While there are some large solar farms, there are also many wind turbines generating power all over Spain. In the distance across the fields, we saw a large group of about 30 or more.

We arrived in Montemarta at about 2 PM, and sat down at Rosa Marie’s Cafe for lunch, the menu of the day. I had an after-walk Coca-Cola, an outstanding bowl of stewed lentils with sausage for the starter, roasted chicken breast with fries for the main course, finishing with homemade flan with a cafe con leche.

The server took a photo of the three of us after lunch.

This first day was a very good start, easing into the Camino walk with a fairly flat, although fairly cold walk. Tomorrow will be just a couple kilometers longer, but also relatively flat, so a good second day as we get into Camino-walking shape.

Next: Day 2 – Montemarta to Granja de Moreruela