Sahagún

The brick tower of San Tirso catches the late-afternoon light like a kiln still glowing. From the west door you can see straight through the nave and out into open cereal fields—no fancy stonework, just terracotta-coloured brick laid in neat bands, the way 12th-century builders here copied Moorish craftsmen. It is the first thing most walkers notice after three days of wheat and sky on the Camino Francés, and it signals that Sahagún has enough confidence in its own skin to build a church entirely out of mudéjar brick when everyone else on the plateau was still quarrying limestone.

Altitude does the talking first: 822 m on the flat roof of León province. Nights are already cool in late September while afternoons hover around 22 °C—perfect for drying washing on the balcony of the albergue before the next eight-day stretch across the treeless Meseta. In July the same thermometer drifts past 35 °C by eleven o'clock; the sensible options then are a 06:00 start or simply stay on the 09:34 train to León and come back when the cereal stubble stops smouldering.

Brick, Not Stone

Sahagún’s self-assurance came from the Benedictine abbey that once controlled half the province. Little remains above ground—an arch punched through the modern road, a side chapel with 15th-century roof timbers—but the abbots’ taste for slender brick campaniles survives in two parish churches within 200 m of each other. San Tirso keeps the older, squatter profile; San Lorenzo adds an extra storey and a pattern of saw-tooth brick that would look at home in Aragón. Both are usually locked outside Mass times, yet the exteriors repay a slow circuit: sun-warmed brick smells faintly of clay, and the horseshoe arches throw shadows sharp enough to sketch.

Across the railway line, the Ermita de la Peregrina still turns a blind medieval eye to the goods-yard sidings. Its small portico is the last scrap of carved stone most north-bound pilgrims see before the Meseta flattens everything into horizon; inside, someone has pinned a fresh scallop shell to the linen-draped altar. The place feels used rather than curated, which is exactly the point.

Saturday Night, Spanish Time

By 20:30 the Plaza Mayor’s colonnades begin to fill. Grandparents occupy the metal tables outside Café Covadonga while their grandchildren weave footballs between the pillars. A British voice asks for “una cerveza sin alcohol” and receives an alcohol-free Estrella poured into a chilled glass—no fuss, no surcharge. The municipal band may or may not turn up; if they do, it will be a brisk pasodoble and then everyone goes home at 22:00 sharp. This is social life stripped to basics: no karaoke, no gastro-taps, just neighbours arguing over the merits of this year’s chickpea harvest.

Those chickpeas reappear next morning in cocido leonés, a clay bowl of meat-rich broth followed by the pulses and a second plate of cabbage and potato. Ask for media ración unless you are walking 25 km; the full portion could anchor a plough team. House specialities round the square include cecina de León—air-cured beef shaved so thin it curls like wood-shavings—and nicanores, spirals of sweet pastry dusted with icing sugar that travel well in the rucksack pocket reserved for emergencies.

A Town that Still Works

Guidebooks sometimes dismiss Sahagún as a “Camino service centre”, yet that is precisely what makes it useful. There is a pharmacy that opens till 14:00 on Sundays, a 24-hour lavadora opposite the medieval hospital ruins (€4 wash, €3 dry, token from the bar), and a Saturday street market where you can stock up on plastic tubs of raisins and walnuts before the 17 km shadeless haul to El Burgo Ranero. The two cashpoints hide three streets south of the square—worth remembering because the albergue network still runs on coins.

Need a zero day? Regional trains leave hourly for León (35 min, €6.45), letting you trade mudéjar brick for Gothic stained glass and be back for tortilla by suppertime. The station is an easy kilometre along the river path; duck under the road bridge and look for the storks nesting on the disused signal gantry.

Walking Out

If you are not hiking the full Camino, two local circuits give a taste of the plateau without the blisters. Follow the dirt track past the football ground and you reach the Puente Canto, a medieval river crossing now restricted to tractors and walkers. Three kilometres further brings you to the hamlet of Villamarco, where a 10th-century chapel has a horseshoe apse that pre-dates most of Spain’s cathedrals. Morning light is best; by 15:00 the wind can lift enough topsoil to repaint your sunglasses beige.

The longer Ruta de los Monasterios loops 14 km through irrigation channels and sunflower fields to reach the ruins of San Miguel de Escalada, another brick-and-stone hybrid that opened in 913 and is still roofed. The path is sign-posted but carries almost no shade; carry two litres of water between Easter and October.

When to Come, When to Leave

Sahagún works best as a twenty-four-hour pause. Arrive after lunch, check the church towers while the sun is still friendly, wash everything you own, then linger over the plaza’s evening paseo. Next morning, visit the Benedictine nuns’ museum if retablos and gilt monstrances are your thing (€2, open 10:30–13:00), buy fruit from the market, and catch the 11:05 train onwards. Stay longer and you will notice the shuttered houses on Calle Real or hear how the secondary school is down to two classes; like many Castilian service towns, Sahagún is comfortable rather than booming.

But comfort has its merits after days of wheat silence. The brick glows again at sunset, the plaza fills with greetings instead of ring-tones, and for one evening the Meseta feels less like an exercise in endurance and more like a place people never really left.