Stage Carrión de los Condes to Ledigos

The exit from Carrión de los Condes is along a local road, leaving behind the monastery of San Zoilo and the bridge over the river Carrión. The asphalt soon gives way to the Calzada Romana, an endless straight line of fine earth that crosses the steppe without a single village, without shade and without fountains for seventeen kilometres. It is the loneliest stretch of the Camino Francés and one of the most remembered: not for physical hardship, but for the mental demand of walking for hours across a horizon that never changes.

Calzadilla de la Cueza finally appears as a relief, with its bar and its hostel. From there the Camino runs parallel to the road, on a comfortable surface, and strings together the small settlements of Tierra de Campos until it reaches Ledigos, a village of adobe and rammed earth with barely fifty inhabitants, whose church of Santiago Apóstol has the rare distinction of depicting the three invocations of the apostle.

The fine earth surface is welcome in dry weather, but it waterlogs easily when it rains. In autumn and winter waterproof footwear is advisable, as is an early start: on the meseta night falls early and the wind cuts.