Day 27: Villanueva de Campeán to Zamora

Finally I am able to write another entry on this blog after almost two years of waiting to return to the Camino. I set off on Shrove Tuesday evening flying to Madrid and then spending overnight in the city centre. It was a late arrival, getting to the hostal about 11pm, and a fairly early start, getting up to be able to catch the 8am train from Chamartin station to Zamora. With high speed rail the journey is only a little over an hour, which is not bad for 235km. 

So I arrived in Zamora at just after 9am and, after coffee in the station bar, for a taxi to take me back to the place where I decided to abandon the Camino at the onset of the COVID pandemic: Villanueva de Campeán. Now, Villanueva is a small village, but two years ago there were two albergues and a bar - the bar where I had decided to get home to avoid the Spanish lockdown. Two years on, both albergues are closed, awaiting renovation, and the bar was closed too. In fact, I couldn't find a single person in the village who could stamp my credencial or pilgrim passport. So I left this moribund village and made my way along the sandy earth track which is the form that the Camino takes here mostly. 

I made a short detour from the Camino to take in the village of San Marcial, which has a bar which was open! It was midmorning, so time for a coffee and to buy water, which I had expected to be able to obtain in Villanueva, but had to wait the 5km till I got to this small village. The bar owner, like the taxi driver earlier, took a great interest in my journey and were pleasant and helpful.

Being a day of fasting and abstinence I didn't have anything other than the coffee, but the water for the journey was essential. I was soon on my way again. Zamora, like a number of towns along the way, was visible from afar. The flat terrain and lack of anything in the line of sight to give an idea of distance means that the destination seemed closer than the 13km that the road sign indicated. The route bypasses the two villages of El Perdigón and Entrala on the right, and an industrial estate on the left. Six kilometres out of Zamora, a fellow pilgrim from Germany caught me up and we walked the last hour and a half together. He was a seasoned pilgrim and we shared a good conversation about pilgrimage and world affairs, focusing of course on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, but also taking in the beauty of this small city on the River Duero and its simple unspoilt Romanesque architecture. Crossing the puente de piedra (the stone bridge, to distinguish it from the iron bridge further along the river), we emerged in the heart of Zamora.

We arrived in Zamora earlier than I had expected in time for a rest to catch up on missed sleep and relax a little before going for some dinner and an early night.