The storm roared but we slept soundly.
Having abandoned the hostel in Grañón, Bob and I found a private room in a nearby B&B. The owner required more money than the hostel manager, of course, but sleeping in a real bed with real sheets (no plastic cover) without snoring (or crazy) neighbors was delightful. We even had a furnished kitchen. We washed our laundry and hung it from the kitchen chairs.
Outside the rain came down. It pelted the window panes and poured down the copper spouts. But we were oblivious. We were dry, rested, and well fed.
Grañón at dawn (in the rear view mirror). Swaths of standing grain were flattened overnight.
We walked out of the B&B at dawn, although it was hard to judge. The sky hung down woolly and wet. Rolling thunder could still be heard in the distance. Rain gear, typically buried deep in our packs, rode on top, just in case.
The trail consisted of mud and water.
When el sol did eventually break through, it did so in pieces. Puddles reflected this brokenness; the dark mud slurped and absorbed everything else (including our dry socks). The low angle of the light accentuated the contours of the surrounding grain fields. Swaths were flattened by the wind in unpredictable patterns.
We slogged through all this, spattered. We were anxious to put some miles between ourselves, the Talking Woman, and Mad Jac MacKnife.
We approached the northwestern corner of the Ebro River basin. The open landscape is backed by the central Iberian mountain chain (Sistema Ibérico). Image courtesy of Google Earth.
Between Grañón and Villafranca de Montes de Oca we walked over tributaries of the Ebro. By holding to the south flank of this narrowing river valley, we circumvented the “Mountains of Oca” (or Sierra de la Demanda). This pattern is as old as the Camino Francés itself. Historically, the mountains were avoided because of their rugged terrain, wolves, and bandits.*
None of these presented themselves. Fact is, after the panic of the previous evening and the storm of the night, it turned into a beautiful day. The threat of rain dwindled. The trail dried under the summer sun. We found ourselves surrounded by pleasant and relatively uninhabited farmland.
A field of bulbous pods.
We passed a field of slender plants with bulbous pods.
“Poppies!” I cried (with probably more glee than I should have).
Such fields are rare, unmarked, and carefully monitored. The reason? Raw opium (think morphine and Vicodin and other narcotic drugs) are derived from the latex tears of Papaver somniferum, the Opium poppy. (Only later did I learn that Spain is the second leading producer of legal opium on the planet—just behind Australia. According to one source, 28% of the world’s morphine comes from a single factory in Toledo.**).
Our term “opium” is a legacy of the Greeks who used the word opion to describe “poppy juice.”*** Long before the Greeks, the drug was known. It shows up in Bronze Age sites in Europe, and may (contrary to some claims) be indigenous to the western end of the Mediterranean Basin.
Left: Spanish poppy pods, image inverted. Right: Late Bronze Age Cypriot “Bilbil,” formed in the shape of a poppy pod, and used as a container for opium. This image is from here (accessed 12/26/2021).
What little knowledge I carried of poppy pods came from my study of ancient ceramics of the biblical Heartland. A special kind of juglet, known as a bilbil (Cypriot base-ring ware) was common in Late Bronze age contexts (think about the moment of Joshua-Judges in the biblical narrative). These small containers are thought to have contained oils, perfumes, or—are you ready?—opiates!**** Those Canaanites were wild and crazy guys!
We shot a few pictures of the field and the poppy pods and hurried down the trail. No telling if there were security cameras around.
Rural Spanish architecture.
By the end of the day, we made Villafranca de Montes de Oca. The hostel, San Antón Abad, was comfortable. To make things even better, I got a bunk beside an screened window. I was determined to sleep with it open all night.
Bob and I purchased microwave dinners from the nearby grocery and cooked them in the communal kitchen. As we did so, round two of the storm moved in. Rain and wind swept in with force. Unlike round one, this round produced hail. Pea-sized pearls fell from sky and bounced off the the pavement. Fortunately, we had a dry perch from which to watch the show.
Have a look out my window for yourself.
The rain and wind and hail diminished by nightfall. I drifted off to sleep. When I woke up, someone had closed and locked the window. Miasma must have been lurking in the night!
¡Buen Camino!
A dramatic sky hung over Villafranca de Montes de Oca.
We have a full slate of Bible Land trips ready to launch in 2022. Check out a complete list by clicking here or peruse under the heading “Find your Trip.” For more information on how to join one of these trips or if you are interested in helping to craft a unique trip for your own group, church, or school, contact me at markziese@gmail.com.