Like all the other sights along the Camino Francés, the housing styles reflect the history, geography and climate the pilgrim will encounter along the route. The climate of northern Spain can run from the searing heat of the meseta to the misty lands of Galicia (known locally as España verde or green Spain). Building materials reveal what was available in the immediate neighbourhood. The lack of stone meant mud-brick adobe in the meseta of Castile-Léon, the abundance of stone in Galicia was the foundation of the traditional palloza (an ancient stone round house with thatched roof). The houses of the Basque country in the Pyrenees were built to withstand the cold winter winds and snow while the buildings in the great plain were designed to hide their occupants from the heat of the midday sun. Some styles are simple in their embrace of the unadorned, massive stone lintels and cornices (in the Navarran countryside) or extravagantly painted in ice cream colours and filigreed ironwork balconies like those of Léon. And wherever you go along the Camino, the beauty of the summer flower boxes spilling over the balcony edge are a delight to the eye. In future posts we will take a look at those houses and what they say about the places in which they were erected and the people who call them home.