Amid the wealth of historical treasures the Meseta contains, a reasonably modern canal wouldn’t seem – at first glance – to be of much interest to a pilgrim. The Canal de Castilla was built in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like many other historic sites on the camino, the canal has reinvented itself over time from a bustling navigational waterway once plied by hundreds of barges to a peaceful backwater with a largely irrigational purpose.

The canal is 207km (a little over 128 miles) long and has three distinct branches. On the Camino Francés is the Northern Branch on the stage leading into Frómista where we are headed to now.