Boadilla to Carrion de los Condes - Day 11

Palm Sunday.  The singing nuns (Clarisa?) I say that I don't know why I'm on the Camino, not entirely true.  Hot.  Walk last 6 quickly, late.  Arrive 15 minutes before "meet and greet."  My first top bunk.  Man in bunk below me holds my feet down on the ladder rungs when I have trouble getting down from bed.  Room is sweltering in the night. Poblacion.  Gift of shell.  Nuns, gift of Star and blessing/laying on of hands.  Cry through whole thing.  Breakfast. Man selling trinkets directs me where to go, but I hear bells, and see a procession, so go up the hill to mass (my first).  Children stomp loudly out of church.  Leaving town, two women give me their blessing "Vaya con Dios."

Last town before Villalcazar de Sirga resting under massive pines, birds, bird shit, tree drops down cone, I take a picture of it, a gift.  Leave sanctuary for hot road because I have to pee.

I stop at an open bar in Villalcazar, other people finishing their lunches.  I sit in the shade and order beer, water, and later, ice cream, while I rest and some to a decision of whether to stay or continue.  Other two peregrinos nearby seem to be continuing, at any rate, I haven't figured out where to stay here (I've stayed here three times before, not sure why I'm having an issue today, and in general on this trip...it's not due to a lack of rooms, I don't actually know, it's due to my anxiety of walking through a door and asking).  In the end, just after 4:30, I decide to walk, kinda' against my better judgment: it's really hot, it's late, it's Sunday, and there are almost no cars on the road. I walk fast, at least for me.  (I have this thing about being punished for making mistakes, it's not just paranoia, I have been punished for dumb mistakes, more than common sense or decency would warrant.  At any rate, I'm trying to have a view of God as love, and not a tyrant, and to that end I've been praying, and pray today, that God, the saints, Mary, etc., stay with me and protect me, even if I make the wrong choice-stay with me here, logic doesn't work, it doesn't get deep enough to change a lifetime of thought patterns- and every so often, when I pray (that I won't get heat exhaustion or abducted or whatever) a cooling breeze kicks up from the bare fields, and cools me off, and I continue with a little more courage and belief in my own choices.

There's a man walking just in front of me, and though he is walking considerably faster than I, I keep him in view for most of the 6 kms.  Not sure what practical good that is, but psychologically it works, so I go with it.

I try to sing in the meet and greet, but my throat is hurting again (a lot), not sure if it's the dryness, the dust, the continual coughing, or the lingering effects of the previous cold.  (A week after I arrive home, I test positive for Strep, so don't know if I was actually sick the whole time, or if I caught that later on.)

Last I see of the Italian man, we cross paths several times early in the day, but I think he stayed back in Villarmentero.

(Boadilla del Camino, Fromista, Poblacion, Revenga de Campos, Villarmentero de Campos, Villalcazar de Campos, Carrion de los Condes, about 23.5 kms.)