Frómista

MiToday was another shorter day, though it was supposed to get hot, and so I wanted to get an early start to use the cool morning. So I was on the Camino by 7am, and got here to Frómista by 11:30. It was a nice morning walk across level fields. About 9am we came to a village and had our midmorning snack. The village church was locked up and so continued on. Walked for awhile along an irrigation canal that was quite an engineering feat when it was built in the18th century. It was supposed to be for both irrigation and transport of the grain, but railroads took over the transportation aspects and it is used just for irrigation or recreation.
Frómista is a little bigger town. There are three old churches in town, two are museums. The first museum was closed due to some sort of problem which I couldn't quite understand. The parish church is nice with its typical 16th century altarpiece. But the real treasure was a little parish museum on the side. For 1€ they had some 18 paintings from a 16th century altarpiece, from the other closed museum in fact. Seems someone tried to steal them in 1980, so they were considered safer in the more active church on display. It's not a big fancy museum so you could examine these up close and personal. From the Flemmish school, they were full of detail you wouldn't see if they were far up on an altarpiece. Simply delightful.
That was all before 1 pm when the hostel opened and I could get settled, get a little nap before heading out to explore the local historical church.
The final church, St Martin, is a very beautiful and pure 12th century Romanesque church which actually gives Frómista some fame. It was made a national monument and restored back to its original state. So it has clean classical lines and proportions, and 12th c. carvings at the tops of the columns. Not a lot special to talk about, but beautiful in its simplicity.
I went to the pilgrim's Mass at St Pedro's at 8pm. Nice but now I need to get to bed real soon.
May God bless you and keep you in his loving hands.