Today's walking was only 24km, and after the 12 or so kilometres yesterday it constituted something of rest period since leaving Lourdes. And it was a good first day for Rupert, who is back on the Camino after a month away - he's been emailing me with concern that after three weeks of solid walking I'll simply stride off into the distance and do lots of 30-40km days.
The walking was pretty straightforward. We started early, and stopped on the outskirts of León at a suburb enticingly named 'Virgin of the Camino' where the local greasy-spoon equivalent did a deep fried twisty thing that apparently you have for breakfast. It was extruded straight into the deep fat fryer, and tasted surprisingly good.
The walk through the outskirts of León saw us pass over the local motorway network, which was both brand new and completely deserted - confirming my suspicion that Spain has blown an awfully large amount of money on poorly conceived infrastructure works.
The hostel we ended up at was lovely. I decided that despite Rupert's infamous 'I'm dreaming about a scary monster, but if I do a special extra-loud snore I'll scare it away' episodes, I ought to sleep next to him on the bottom bunks that had been pushed together. Actually I told him that I'd slipped the albergue manageress that a couple of extra Euros to put us in closely adjoining bunks.
Rupert had a snooze while I did our laundry, and I promptly managed to lose his underpants. My explanation that he'd made such an impression on the fellow walkers that one of them had run off with his undercrackers fell short the next day when he discovered them casually drying in an apple tree in the adjacent field, and retrieved them with one of his walking poles.
