Coca 23 September

Today's walk was a pretty easy  23 km or about 14 miles of mostly flat terrain. In addition to the dry land crops like wheat and sunflowers, this area also has irrigated crops, including berries, asparagus, cole crops, and chard and kale. My leg muscles are still acclimating to the longer distances, so today's easy walk was welcome. I arrived before noon at Coca's albergure to be greeted by a sign directing me down the street to the person with the keys. She was an elderly lady, who herself was a peregrina fifteen years ago. After settling in at the albergue, showering, and washing my clothes, I took off for the bar in town that has wifi. I did some catching up, since I have had neither wifi nor cell service the past 48 hours. After doing so, I checked out the restaurant across the street which had bacalao on their menu deal dia. It was passably good,about on a par with that I had a few days ago in Segovia. Afterwards,I walked about the town. Their claim to fame here, besides existing since Roman times is a Gothic-Mudejar castilla built in the1500's by the Moors on commission from the Catholic Church as well as a nicely preserved church, once of six originally in the city. I am resting up now while I write this and will go out later to do my grocery shopping, then back down to the bar that has wifi to post this. It was good to talk earlier with Kathy. I know she was worried about not hearing from me, but the sparsely populated farm country I was walking through meant no cell service and, as it turned out, no wifi either.

Tapping the pine trees for their sap

Irrigated berries

Today's bacalao

The Mudejar Castillo

Plaque outside the church commemorating the town's dead in the Spanish Civil War. This is the third church in this area that I have seen with such a plaque. It was an area hit hard by the war.