travel

A week ago I was on my way home. It was a long flight, 8 hours to Toronto and then another 4 to Calgary. Then drive back to the West Kootenays.

It’s good to be back!

The first few days back were hard. In part it was the time change – my body needed to adjust to the 9 hours difference between here and Spain. The smells and sounds also are different – I had become accustomed to the smells and sounds of Spain. But the biggest adjustment was getting used again to sitting in a car. So much sitting in a car! A week later I still am not liking it.

Nevertheless, it’s good to be back. I got my camera, a couple lenses and the tripod out of storage today – I am looking forward to work on pictures again!

One of my old pictures – “Summer”

May 11 and 12 we walked short distances, 11.3 and 13.9 k. We are “listening to our bodies” and they tell us to take it easy, to slow down and recover. So that’s what we are doing.

The walk from Castrojeriz to Itero de la Vega goes up about 200 metres right out of Castrojeriz, over a hump and into a different valley.

We crossed from the province of Burgos into Palencia. Both Burgos and Palencia are subdivisions of Castilla y León. We were told the province of Palencia was (is??) called “el granero de Europa – Europe’s breadbasket”. Field and fields of wheat!

It is beautiful to watch the wind play with the wheat in the fields, make them ripple like green waves!

In Itero de la Vega, a significant number of storks make their nests on the church’s roof. The parishioners take down the nests because they damage the roof, but the storks come back and rebuild their nests within days.

The storks make noises that sound like a motor:

The walk from Itero de la Vega to Frómista was uneventful. More wheat fields everywhere.

One difference is that many of the fields are irrigated. We walked for quite a while along the Canal de Castilla, a large canal made for irrigation purposes. There even is a tourist boat on the canal!