Your shadow stretches long across the gravel, beside a row of young trees that barely cast any shade yet. This is how the day begins: flat, straight and open.
This is the meseta as you know it from the stories. Almost nothing to climb, almost nothing to descend, hour after hour on the same path alongside fields and a road. Your legs will have it easy. Your head will find it harder, because with more than seven hours of walking, it’s mostly about keeping going. In El Burgo Ranero and Reliegos you can sit down for a while. Then comes Mansilla de las Mulas, with a public albergue. As you walk in, the plain lies behind you: wheat fields all the way to the horizon, with the path running through them like a thin line.