1st stage: Leon - Hospital de Orbigo (38 km)

On my first day on the Camino I made the second grievous mistake during my so far short journey. I decided to walk the long distance given in my guide book with the recommendation not to do it if it’s the first stage of the pilgrimage. I underestimated the physical stress, in particular the stress of my shoulders because of the heavy backpack. But from the beginning:


Early in the morning at 7 o'clock I left the pilgrim's hostel and my car at a parking area in front of the local police headquarters trusting that it will be there when I will return nearly 2 weeks later. So I made my way to the hostel of the Benedictine monks in the inner city to get the pilgrim's pass and started to walk the path along all place of interest slowly out of León. It didn’t take such a long time I got talking to another pilgrim: Hong San from Korea, but we separated at the exit of León with him taking the northern route along the road and me heading south to Villar de Mazarife on a field road. The southern way is supposed to be the more beautiful one but also more difficult. The way itself was a bit boring, particularly from Villar de Mazarife to Hospital de Orbigo on a straightforward asphalt road without any diversion along with the flatness of the landscape. Halfway trough it got very windy and my shoulders started to hurt very bad. I had to take a couple of long breaks and began to doubt whether it was the right decision to make this journey. After 11 hours and 38 km I arrived Hospital de Orbigo completely exhausted and was searching for a place to spend the night. I wanted to get rid of this heavy backpack and out of this heavy boots, which already made me a lot of blisters. Fortunately there was at least one pilgrim’s hostel opening and only 7 other pilgrims I had to share the shelter with. It was a coloured mixture of 2 Spanish (Francisco and Jeordie), 2 Finish (Arto and Ilka), 1 French guy (Pascal), an American woman (Elisabeth) and the Korean guy I met in the morning. After introducing ourselves and a short conversation we went out to a bar to have one of the popular pilgrim menus for dinner. On this lovely evening I forgot all the discomfort I felt during the day. I couldn’t imagine that people of so much different countries get along with each other within minutes, even less some of them would accompany me the next days.