19.5 km – 12.1 miles

6:45am to 12:00pm walking time

0-ish elevation gain

When it rains it pours. It didn’t actually rain today (though it’s supposed to this evening), but the hits keep coming for me on this walk. I had a horrible night last night with food poisoning symptoms. I got up exhausted since I barely slept. I know the rumors are going around that the water might be bad along the section of the Camino. Whether it’s that or a flu bug going around, it’s hit a ton of pilgrims hard yesterday and today. Can’t really pinpoint a common place where the random variety of pilgrims I know of that got sick and I’ve mostly been in private rooms lately, so that’s why we think maybe the water got many of us. Either way, I’m pretty miserable today.

I had plans of going 26-28km today to the next town after this one. I almost stopped and stayed at Sahagún, but I couldn’t find any open hostels or hotels. I decided to keep walking to the next town because at least if I got there, I’d be able to break the 2 days into León into two shorter days. I also considered just getting a bus or train to León and skipping the next two days of the Camino. But I’m too stubborn and I want to walk all 500 miles.

This was part of my afternoon hydration plan since I haven’t eaten anything at all today. I figured the beer could try to help kill the germs. Lots of electrolytes and water. I picked up a bocadillo, but purposefully waited until I was back at my hostel room to eat it. So I’ll attempt that after this.

The day was shorter (unfortunately) and also pretty easy going. I walked to Sahagún by myself, but just outside of there Ben from the US and Liam from London joined me and we walked together to Bercianos. We had some great conversation along the way, so I really appreciated the company. I took a break with them and then they went on to the town I had planned to go to.

I’m in yet another sleepy town tonight outside the bars and albergues (even two of those are closed today). After showering and getting my laundry done I headed back to the albergue as you enter town because it had good looking bocadillos and I figured that would be something mellow to try with my stomach. While there I ran into Chris and Ken from Florida and Wayne from Canada and we sat down together while they had lunch and had some nice conversation. This has been a better day of avoiding loneliness, but I’d love to be feeling better to spend dinner with them as well. I’ll be trying to sleep super early.

Anyway, really hoping I feel better tomorrow. This bug or food poisoning is something pretty awful.