Day 6 – Segovia to Los Huertos

So today we started out from Segovia, just a short day of 13 kilometers to Los Huertos, where it’s a very small four-bed albergue. Pat was struggling a little bit from the last couple of days and also just feeling a bit drained. Health hasn’t been great the last couple of days. So coming out of Segovia was a bit of a struggle for her because there’s a steep downhill and then a steep uphill and we got some medication for various things on the way out of Segovia. It was touch and go whether we would actually walk today or not. But we started off slowly and I think, you know, as long as you walk slowly and keep moving forward you get there eventually.

There was a lovely old church on the way up out of the hill, on the way out of Segovia, going up the hill. We stopped briefly in Zamarramala and we hoped to stop there briefly for a snack, but nothing was open. And then we continued into Valseca, where again, we hoped to get a snack, but there was nothing available. But the locals told us, I mean, obviously our Spanish is not that good, but the locals told us about something that was happening down the road where we could get some food. And so, we walked down the road and found the whole village there was celebrating with a huge picnic and roasting a pig and all kinds of things. And they welcomed us and said, “You know, that’s Tanya as a ticket.” But we found that the food wasn’t going to be ready for an hour or two and we really needed to press on. So, we thanked them very much, but explained that we needed to keep moving.

And so, we moved on to Los Huertos, which was very interesting because we arrived at the albergue and there was a guy standing at the door of the albergue and says, “Hey, Rob!” He’s actually somebody from the Camino Forum that I knew was walking at a similar time. And we knew that we’d sort of meet up at some point. So, I said, “Please tell me that it’s not full.” And he said, “It’s full.” “Oh no, ’cause we really didn’t want to have to walk another 8.7 onto Añe”, which was the next small albergue. But anyway, Ursula, the lady who looks after the albergue at Los Huertos, came over and she dragged two air mattresses out of a cupboard and explained. Thankfully, with the help of Andrew, who’s Spanish is near fluent, I think, she explained that we could put these on the floor of the medical center, which was kind of within the same building as the albergue.

If you can imagine, they had this little medical center and then there’s a room that’s been converted into an albergue, it’s also kind of part of the same building. And so we put air mattresses on the floor of the doctor’s surgery. And we had access through to the bathrooms in the albergue and stuff like that, and it worked out really well. We had a great sleep.

So, an interesting albergue experience for Pat. And the bar in Los Huertos, which is sometimes open, sometimes closed, a bit hard to work out, was really good, had some great food, the guy running it was good. We had some lunch there and I asked him, “What time are you open till? Thinking we might pop down for a snack for dinner.” And he kind of just shrugged and said, “You know, late.”

So, all in all, Los Huetos was a great experience and we’re looking forward to tomorrow where we’re heading over towards Santa Maria La Real de Nieva.