In The City

CAMINO FRANCÉS – Day 20: Monday 28 April 2025 – REST DAY in LEÓN

The city of León has a population of around 130,000 and is, after Pamplona, Logroño and Burgos, the fourth city on the Camino Francés route between San Jean in southwest France where I started my walk and the Camino’s destination in the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. León is also the final settlement of more than 15,000 souls that I will pass through on the remaining stages of this pilgrimage during the next couple of weeks. It has certainly been good to have spent a relaxing day in León, and I am sure that you will see from my pictures what a historically and culturally interesting city this is, and what a busy and thriving place to have a Rest Day.

Having been a day ahead of plan in arriving here yesterday, my two nights in León mean that I am now back exactly on my schedule at the end of my third section, and my 20th day of the Camino Francés. According to my calculations I have now covered 466 of the 779 kilometres (or 290 of the 484 miles) on the path itself, and I have climbed, cumulatively, about 6,500 metres, spending a total of around 120 hours on the trail including breaks. The remainder of my trek crosses the north-western parts of the province of Castilla y León, before crossing into Galicia for the final few days of the walk. After several days across flat ground during the last week the path will soon return to the hills, with some demanding days of walking ahead in the final sections, including four daily climbs of between 800 and 1,200 metres. I am certainly glad of this Rest Day to set me up for the forthcoming stages of the Camino.

I just want to conclude today by thanking everyone for their supportive messages (especially around caring for my aching shoulders, following my post yesterday), and also for the various comments on my Blog posts; and to Steve in particular who I believe has responded every day. Also, as a postscript, you all probably know that the Iberian peninsula had a total power shutdown today, for reasons that are still unclear to me. I had quite a lot of messages from concerned folk at home, and thank you for these. In actual fact, other than some difficulties uploading photos, and cold options only for dinner tonight, the outage did not affect me too much. Indeed, the ‘dark’ tour of the Cathedral actually enhanced the splendour of the stained glass windows. So thank you all, and I will be in touch again tomorrow.

The song ‘In The City’ that I have taken as today’s Blog heading was co-written (with collaborator Barry De Vorzon) and originally recorded by Joe Walsh for the soundtrack to the 1979 film ‘The Warriors’. At the time Walsh’s country rock band Eagles were putting together their sixth studio album ‘The Long Run’, and the number so impressed the band that they recorded their own version for the album, with Walsh again taking on lead vocals and lead guitar. ‘The Long Run’ album was released later in 1979, and was to be the band’s last studio album until ‘Long Road Out Of Eden’ in 2007.