Love Affair

Leon! Wonderful, magical city! I walked there on 3 December from the old, walled town of Mansilla de las Mullas where I'd met up with 3 more pilgrims in the albergue: Sebastiane from Mallorca, Marco from Italy and Philippe from Luxembourg. They had formed a strongly bonded pilgrim group. I saw them all again eating lunch in a restaurant on the outskirts of Leon.

Leon! I liked it the instant I saw it spread out before me from the hill above. You know how you can get an immediate, spontaneous gut-feeling about a place? Well, I got that about Leon. As I wove my way down the lively streets it turned into a full-blown love affair. There was an indefinable quality about Leon I can't adequately put into words. Its haphazard mélange of styles - Roman, medieval, Renaissance, Gaudi, modern - somehow all worked. The raffish charm of Leon crept into your heart in a way the civic magnificence of Burgos didn't. Burgos was the dutiful wife. But Leon the abandoned lover.

The photos show the splendour of Leon's Gothic cathedral.

The Meseta

After Burgos the landscape changed dramatically. We had entered the high plateau land of the northern Spanish Meseta. (Meseta means plateau or tabletop.) For the 1st couple of days crossing this vast, underpopulated region the bare open vistas of farmland were broken up by flat-topped hills and rimmed by faraway mountains whose peaks sometimes glistened with snow. Thereafter the plateau became, well, just a plateau - an empty, featureless plain of far horizons and cereal fields which stretched away as far as the eye could see.

In summer this part of the Camino can be punishing for the pilgrim - hot and cloudless, with little shade. Lonely too. You feel like a little dot, an insect making insignificant progress across a flat, endless landscape. In winter there can be strong winds with high humidity and cold temperatures. When I was there I was spared the high wind - but the nights were crystal-clear cold, and the days sometimes foggy, a fog that often did not lift all day. I think I said earlier that this section of the route, from Burgos to Leon, is known as the Way of Penitence...

We'd walked 30 km and it was almost dark. The village of Hontanas, our day's destination, was nowhere in sight. The treeless Meseta seemed to extend out into infinity. I put on my headtorch. Then I took a sharp, involuntary intake of breath. The illuminated bell tower of the church of Hontanas had suddenly appeared below us in a gash in the plateau. It revealed itself with the sudden intensity of a vision. It was beautiful. We rushed down the steep slope to this isolated village. The village that time forgot.

Later, in the small albergue municipal, 2 jolly Spanish ladies cooked us soup and spaghetti and fried eggs. Later still we climbed one of the rough roads out of the village and looked down onto the spotlit Church of the Assumption (see photo for the same view in the morning light). Cans of beer were passed round. The sweet smell of marijuana drifted over from someone's hand-rolled cigarette. There was a little group of us there on that hill. Squatting on plastic carrier bags on the damp ground. A deep frost would soon descend.

There was laughter. Then silence as we gazed up at the night sky. The constellations were clearly visible. Orion. The Plough. Shooting stars blazed away. I asked myself: what did I feel at that moment? The answer came to me: peace. Peace in a Field of Stars. We eventually stumbled, one by one, back down to the refuge. Where I slept a dreamless sleep.

Burgos Or Bust

I woke early next morning feeling a little crazy, slightly mad. Was it a by-product of the previous night's wine? Had Juan Antonio slipped something into those omelettes? I felt completely rested and ready to walk. My head felt light. My knee seemed in pretty good shape. My feet were singing. I had an energy rush. All long distance walkers have days like this now and again. You just want to walk, walk, walk. Fast and far. It would all be effortless, I thought. Oh dear, how deluded can you be...

Fernando, Tere, Irene and I all left the albergue togther but I soon forged ahead. The path flirted with the noisy N-120 once more. Just before Villafranca there's a nasty bit - 2 bends and a bridge - where you have to walk along the edge of the road. Trucks growled past too close for comfort. In Villafranca I stocked up with provisions.

Then it was up, up, up through the oak and pine forests of the Montes de Oca. This is a lovely area, but that morning was very misty and I couldn't see much. It didn't matter. I simply concentrated on what was close at hand. It was like a secret, subterranean world under those ancient, mossed oak trees. I climbed to the highest point at 1,100 metres. And raced on - now mainly through pines - along the sandy trail. Some parts were quite difficult to walk - soggy sand and cloying mud. I saw no one at all except for one lone cyclist who had to dismount and push his bike on this challenging terrain. After what seemed a very long time the path descended and I reached the Augustinian monastery of San Juan de Ortega. I stopped at the bar next door for a rest and a beer.

San Juan, like his mentor Santo Domingo, dedicated himself to serving the Santiago pilgrims and built churches, hospitals, bridges and hostels along the Camino. This remote and beautiful place used to be dangerous for the medieval pilgrim. You were a very long way from anywhere and there were bandits in the woods. The 1st glimpse of this monastery through the trees must have been very welcome. Fortified by a beer or two, my thoughts became even madder and more crazily ambitious. Perhaps I could walk all the way to Burgos and catch up with my pilgrim friends who'd left me behind at Santo Domingo? I'd already walked 25 km. Burgos was a further 28 km away. Could I walk 53 km - 2 stages in 1 day?

I passed through Agés - with its simple medieval stone bridge built by San Juan de Ortega - and Atapuerca, where a curious village dog followed me for a kilometre or so along the stony path up to the Sierra Atapuerca. No doubt the views from the cross at the summit are breathtaking on a clear day. But the mist still hung around so I pressed on, noticing again the little nearby things - like a circular maze constructed by pilgrims out of stones and pebbles.

It was now downhill all the way to Burgos. As I lost height the mist cleared and the views opened up. You could see the city in a blurry haze on the farthest horizon. Though the open-cast mine on the right was not so edifying. All I remember now is that I stumbled painfully through lots and lots of villages, ducked and dived among many busy arterial roads on the outskirts of Burgos, then steeled myself for the dead straight 7 km stretch from Villafria along the hellish N-1 into the city's historic centre. I more or less crawled into one of the 1st hostales I saw. I was totally exhausted and my knee was a nest of vipers. My feet were lead weights of pain and suffering. I thought of the words Thierry had sagely expressed all that time ago on the French section of the Way: Il faut souffrir un peu pour devenir de plus en plus pèlerin!

My photo is of the splendid Gothic cathedral in Burgos.