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.

El Dorado In Belorado

On 25 November I limped round Santo Domingo and explored the town. But most of the time I tried to rest my knee in my hotel room. I took a very long bath. I wasn't used to having nothing to do. The next morning my knee felt so much better. I thought that - if I took it slowly - I could walk the next 24 km to the albergue at Belorado. And this I did, passing the house in the photo on the way.

Between the villages of Granon and Redecilla you see a monstrously ugly sign stating that you are crossing from La Rioja into Castilla y Leon, the largest region in Spain. Approximately half your time on the Camino is spent walking through this vast region and 3 of its 9 provinces: Burgos, Palencia and Leon.

It was a relief to reach Belorado. Much of the afternoon's route had been dangerously close to the N-120 yet again. I liked the place. It was wonderfully scruffy and ordinary. It was typical of many villages and small towns in northern Spain. It certainly had no desire to tart itself up for the tourists. Thank God. Not that it got many tourists anyway. Only pilgrims.

The albergue was small and friendly. The hospitalero in charge was called Juan Antonio. I found my Spanish pilgrim friends Fernando and Tere already there. There was much hugging, kissing and general embracing. In Belorado's delightful main square I met another pilgrim, Irene from Slovenia, in front of the Church of Santa Maria which was temporarily closed for repairs. She was petite with a mass of dark curly hair, and was incredibly slim and fit. I showed her the way to the hostel.

Fernando and Tere went shopping for tapas which we all shared - cheese, chorizo, olives, crisps... and 2 bottles of Rioja. Fernando cut up the cheese and the chorizo with his big boy scout knife. Later Juan Antonio, a former chef, cooked the evening meal which was served at 8pm on a big wooden table in the kitchen - soup (which had been simmering all afternoon) followed by tuna omelettes. Payment was by donation only - whatever you could afford. Earlier Juan had summoned us into the back garden and proudly shown us his "tame" wild rabbits which he fed every day. I joked with Irene that we'd almost certainly be eating rabbit stew that night. A joke which did not go down terribly well - I discovered later she was vegetarian!

Juan Antonio was a larger-than-life character. He'd walked the Camino, or variations of it, 12 times. Now he'd put on a little weight and catered for the pilgrims. The lifestyle seemed to suit him. When the others had gone from the kitchen, Juan took me to one side. He wedged a log into the wood burning stove and selected another piece of New Age music for the CD player. "Here, take this," he said, and thrust a cockleshell lapel pin, emblazoned with the red cross of Saint James, into my hand. "Don't tell the others," he winked. "This is my special gift for you."

A Pleasant Evening And A Painful Morning

Il faut souffrir un peu pour devenir de plus en plus pèlerin! THIERRY, the Parisian backpacker

A pleasant evening was passed in the albergue at Santo Domingo. Matt, the Australian, was there with his dog (he'd found it straying in the Pyrenees and had adopted it). Matt was tired of working at bum jobs for a living so had decided to wander round Europe instead. In the warmer weather earlier that year he'd often slept out in the woods. Matt wore hippie clothes and had long hair and a beard. He looked like Jesus. Also there was the amenable Hiroshi from Japan. He'd given up a well paid managerial job with a Japanese IT company to walk the Camino. I asked him why. "I had no choice," he replied. "I felt I had to follow my heart."

The next morning 25 November I found I couldn't walk. The last few hours of the previous day's walk had been hard. Throughout the trip I'd been having ongoing trouble with my feet. Though my boots were excellent - beautifully made, Vibram-soled Scarpas - I think they were just a little too narrow for me. Normally any foot aches and pains would vanish by morning. This time they were still there. Plus a big problem with the right knee which had developed from a tingling sensation and a dull ache to full-blown, pulsating agony. I could hardly put my right leg down on the ground.

Another rest day or two were urgently needed. I told my travelling companions to walk on ahead. I booked into a hostal, a small hotel. You are only allowed to stay one night in the albergues. Besides, I wanted some comfort, and somewhere to bathe my feet and rest my knee...

Symbols And Sandwiches

It's 50 km from Logrono over the rich, red earth of La Rioja to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. We split the journey by spending a night in the new albergue municipal at Nájera. For me too much of the 30 km stretch to Nájera was frustratingly close to the busy N-120 highway. But it helped that every so often truck drivers would sound their horns in greeting and encouragement. On a wire fence - perhaps 1km long - above the road, passing pilgrims had attached thousands upon thousands of crosses which they had woven from grass and fashioned from bark and twigs. Laurent was fascinated by the fact that one pilgrim must have placed the very 1st cross at some point - and someone had placed the next one, and someone the next, until thousands of successive pilgrims had run with the idea and taken part in the ritual, continuing what had become a tradition. He remarked what an extraordinary leap of faith that very 1st pilgrim must have had. A bit like planting the first acorn of a future oak forest. This fence-frieze of crosses meant something much more than the sum of its collective parts. It was an example of how something big and important could grow from tiny, individual acts.

The next day we took a detour in Azofra to visit the Cistertian abbey of Santa Maria at Canas. This was founded in 1170 and then, as now, was occupied by an order of nuns. Unusually, natural light flooded the building through high alabaster (rather than stained glass) windows. Laurent, an expert in medieval stone work and ecclesiastical history, held us spellbound with his accounts of monastic life and his unravelling of religious symbolism in the paintings and treasures displayed in the abbey's museum. Unfortunately I've now forgotten a lot of what he said - and it was difficult for me to understand everything at the time, as I had to keep translating complex architectural terms from the French. We spent a couple of absorbing hours there in the Abadia Cisterciense. But finally the biting cold drove us into the friendly bar-restaurant opposite. Laurent put on his most flirtatious expression and cheekily asked the waitress if we could eat our packed lunch in the bar. Of course, she let us. Well, he was French! After more quiet country roads and wide straight farm tracks we arrived in Santo Domingo later that afternoon.