A strange night. At 11pm we were woken by a very loud gurgling and splashing and running of water coming from above us. In my half awake state I wondered who the heck was having a bath at this time. It took a couple of minutes to think hang on a minute, we are alone in this house and we are on the upper floor. Barb got up to check we weren’t in a flood from a burst pipe or something, but everything was okay. At 3am it happened again. We don’t know what it was, maybe a supply tank or boiler flushing and refilling itself?

Since I had been awoken at 3am I went outside to check out the Milky Way. What a disappointment! There was a huge full moon. Bright enough to cast shadows. Only the very brightest of the stars were visible. You could have easily walked the Camino without a torch. I will have to wait about two weeks and try again.

Not much chat at the dinner table last night or breakfast this morning. 4 swedes, 2 french, 3 irish and us. I couldn’t understand anything said by anybody. We got a ride in the hotel van the 2km back to the trail. Initially it was cool climbing back up to the plateau but soon it was stinking hot. Not a breath of wind. The wind turbines were still and useless. Everyone was peeling off layers.

After a while, as often seems to happen, we were in a group of about 5 of our lovely lady friends. Talk about chat, chat, chat! I was the only male so I stopped and pretended to be taking a photo of a turbine doing nothing. This allowed me to drop back about 50metres where I could stroll along in the peace and quiet. It is peaceful on the meseta, just a few birds twittering and sometimes the sound of a far off tractor. I mustn’t speak badly of the ladies, they are all so much fun. Nobody is finding it easy but they are always positive and friendly and time passes much more quickly when you are with them.

Walking across the plateau you keep an eye on the person you can see furthest ahead. If they disappear it is a good sign. Then more and more disappear. They have moved off the plateau and gone down into a canyon. Soon a church steeple rises up out of the canyon. Then you are on the edge and down before you is a village. An oasis. It means toilets, coffee, food, a seat in the shade, taking your shoes off and airing your feet, cool fresh water in your bottles. Bliss!

Just before the oasis town of Hontanas we saw a group of people approaching from a path on our right. They had no packs, walking poles or drink bottles or any of the stuff of regular pilgrims. They looked fresh and above all clean, unlike us. Turns out they were a group of 29 kiwis on a bus tour. They had started in Le Puy in France and were doing about 1800km of the Camino in 3 weeks. They sometimes walked 12 km a day. Today they got off their huge blue coach 1km before Hontanas, walked through the village, and went a further 1km where the coach was now waiting. One chap asked me if we were staying in Leon tonight, as they were. I bit my tongue and told him it would take us a week to get to Leon.

I must not judge, everyone does their camino in their own way. And besides we are not carrying full packs and staying in albergues.

Lots more wild flowers today and Barbara found some strong smelling lavender.

Our destination today was Castrojeriz and the approach to it is absolutely magical. First you go through the spectacular 14th century ruins of a huge convent at San Anton. Ahead of you is a straight road and an avenue of trees. Beyond the trees is a high hill and on the summit a castle. At the foot of the hill on the right is a large church (The Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Apple), and on the left the town of Castrojeriz. It takes nearly an hour to walk down the avenue of trees and enter the town and I found it just breathtaking.

Walking through the town we came across a delightful scene. A group of about 40 children, aged about six, all dressed as medieval pilgrims with floppy hats, brown cloaks, a staff, a gourd, a shell, and pilgrim passports. They were with adults, also dressed up, and going to the churches etc to get stamps in their passports. They were all so excited. Of course there were a few boys at the back who thought it was all pretty stupid and were whacking each other and anything else they could find, with their staffs.

Ipod theme tune for today: Moonshadow by Cat Stevens

Oh, I’m bein followed by a moonshadow,  moonshadow,  moonshadow
Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow.

Today we were introduced to the intimidating Meseta. This is a high plain that starts at Burgos and extends all the way to Leon. It is featureless, with fields of wheat, oats and barley stretching to the horizon. There are no trees so there is no shade and it can be very hot. It can also be very windy so we will see many wind turbines. Occasionally there are rivers that have cut canyons into the plain. Villages are located at the bottom on these canyons where the water is. This means we must descend an often steep path from the plain to the village and then ascend back up to the meseta. We will be crossing the Meseta for a week! 

Leaving Burgos was much more pleasant than entering it. A walk through the old town under the Arch of St Martin part of the fortified city wall, through some parks, past the university and into the countryside. Near the university we came across the first free-standing public convenience we have seen so far. This was an automatic opening /closing /flushing affair that you could use for 30 cents. Interestingly the signs on it said “WC”  In bars and cafes the conveniences are called aseos. We also passed a large state prison with many watch towers. Many political prisoners were held there during the Franco years’ and so many young dissidents got a political education here it was nicknamed “La Universidad”.

After passing over and under several motorway flyovers we started a long slow climb for about an hour onto the true Meseta. For what seemed like hours we walked between flat fields of hay. A little breeze kept us cool and the path was flat, smooth clay. A few tractors were working, turning the cut hay for drying. Eventually we came to the edge of the first canyon and descended Cuesta Matamulas, Mule Killer Hill, to the very quiet village of Hornillos del Camino.

Our hotel was about 2km up a side road at Isar and our instructions said to telephone and they would send a car to pick us up. After some refreshments we felt good so decided to walk. It was hotter now as there was no breeze down in the valley but we got there comfortably enough. We actually have a whole house to ourselves, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, kitchen etc, about 100 metres up the hill from the hotel proper. It feels like we have the whole village to ourselves.

Isar is a very small, peaceful, rural hamlet, a total contrast to the hustle and bustle of Burgos. We have heard that a lot of these villages are nearly empty. Isar has about 100 houses, 50 would be derelict, 30 abandoned and 20 occupied. The only people left are farm workers, some service industry workers and the aged living off their government pensions. Where it passes through a village the Camino provides some employment by way of bars, cafes, albergues, small supermarkets etc.

I have been meaning to get up at night to look at the Milky Way which we are directly under, east to west. If the sky is clear this could be the ideal place as there will be no interference from artificial light.

A heap of bicycles around today. On the roads there were many road warriors, like us at home, decked out in their lycra and carbon fibre road bikes, powering along. And on the trail lots of hybrids and mountain bikes loaded with panniers. A group of seven had jerseys and shorts with “slow men” all over them. Some people don’t like walking the Meseta as they find it too monotonous, too hot, too windy, whatever. They walk St Jean Pied de Port to Burgos, cycle Burgos to Leon (which they can cycle in three days), walk Leon to Santiago. Others just get the bus from Burgos to Leon.

Ipod theme tune for the day: Nine million bicycles by Katie Melua

There are nine million bicycles in Beijing
That’s a fact
It’s a thing we can’t deny
Like the fact that I will love you till I die.

Today was a happy day and a sad day. Also a typical tourist day.

Sad because we said goodbye to a few of our camino friends. Tom and Eileen from USA are not having rest days so they carried on and will be one day ahead of us to Leon then two days ahead. Tom and Margaret from Ireland finish today and go home. Kevin, Stuart, Rose, Lynn and Eileen from northern England also finish today and got the bus to Balboa. These guys have been such good fun and we had many laughs together.

We met Victoria and Craig in the street which was great because we hadn’t seen them for a couple of days and wondered how they were getting on. Just on lunchtime we saw Carolyn and John and we decided to have some lunch together. In the cafe was Helen, who we have seen and walked with often, so it was a nice catch up. Ensalada mixta, which are large yummy salads with lettuce, tomato, olives, carrot, tuna, egg, onion, corn, asparagus.

This morning we spent 2 hours in the Museo de la Evolucion Humana, a wonderful new award winning museum. The museum has two parts starting with the history of the prehistoric caves at Sierra de Atapuerca, which we walked through yesterday, and contains over 200 fossils of Homo antecessor some up to a million years old. The remainder of the museum is devoted to the theory of evolution, human evolution, why we have a very special brain, the first tools, fire, Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, prehistoric art, symbolism and the complexity of the human mind. In the museum we met a couple from Wellington!  We didn’t recognise them as kiwis as their accents sounded so posh.

After the museum we went to the Catedral de Santa Maria. One of the most beautiful of Spain’s many cathedrals and the second largest. It is basically 13th century gothic but as it was enlarged, reshaped, and adorned over the next 500 years, it also has Plateresque, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art. It has a magnificent inspirational exterior with a profusion of highly decorated pinnacles and spires. Inside, the enormous space is a treasure trove of artefacts and art works. We each had an audio commentary and there was so much history and detail it became overwhelming and we had to escape and get some lunch.

In the evening we went up to the castle which is not that impressive and wasn’t open but from the hill there is a great view over the city. Also saw the statue of the warrior El Cid on his steed Babieca. Spain’s most famous medieval warlord has a cape that floats in the wind so the locals have a nickname for the monument: el murcielago (the bat). For my generation El Cid will always be Charlton Heston (with the incomparable Spohia Loren) in the 1961 epic historical movie.

Burgos (population ~ 200,000) is the capital of the province of Burgos and the historic capital of Castille. It contains a staggering wealth of art, churches, monasteries, convents, museums, monuments and it’s jewel the cathedral.

We enjoyed today, it was nice to be an ordinary tourist. We are about one third of the way to Santiago and walked the last nine days in a row so we probably needed a day off just to freshen up for the nine days ahead. Can’t wait to get on the road again.

Today was one climb of 150m in height but otherwise a long downhill to the city of Burgos. We are at an altitude of 1000m and it is common to get mist in the morning. This is exactly what we got as we headed off after our gourmet picnic breakfast. Cool and crisp in pine trees and scrubland before coming out on to open pasture.

Lots of wild flowers again, orchids, daffodils, buttercups and many we didn’t recognise. Also for the first time saw a flock of sheep out in a paddock. They were skinny with black and white faces, sort of elongated panda faces. And they wore tinkley bells.

We stopped for a coffee and chocolate croissant before tackling the final steep part of the climb. The coolness had evaporated, we were above the mist and the sun was beating down as we passed a large wooden cross on the top of the Atapuerca Massif.

In one of the caves that riddle the massif archaeologists found the oldest human remains in Europe. The fossils, discovered in 1994, are of early humans dating from 127,000 to 1,000,000 years ago. Some of the bones seem to come from a previously unknown subspecies of hominid, Homo antecessor, who may be the common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

From the summit we could see the city of Burgos, far off and blurry in a brown smog. The traditional route skirts around the right hand side of the airport and goes through about 10km of noisy and dirty light industrial and commercial suburbs. A new alternative route has been developed on the left hand side of the airport and then following the River Arlanzon through parkland right into the heart of the city.

We decided on the latter but fuelled up with bananas, strawberries and muffins before heading off. It was now about midday and we expected a very hot three hours. However St James was looking after us and a nice cooling summer breeze followed us all the way. For two hours we walked along the security fence of the airport. So tedious! We saw the control tower, terminal, hangers, planes on the ground, but in two hours not one single plane landed or took off. What’s with that? Maybe the airport has an early siesta.

The walk along the River was great. Under the trees all the way, at first on clay but then on a wide, sealed walking /cycleway.

I should have mentioned in yesterday’s post that Barbara saw a snake on the path. We see lots of skinks and geckos but this was the first snake. It was mottled green, about 500mm long, as thick as two fingers and had a lump about halfway along it as if it had swallowed a mouse. It was too fast and I was too slow to get a photo. It was probably a grass snake. The snake story was repeated several times at dinner last night over a couple of glasses of wine. By lunch time today the snake was now 2metres long, as thick as your arm, had eaten a rat and was one of Spain’s deadly venomous vipers.

Such is the way that legends are born on the Camino.

Ipod theme tune for today: Summer Breeze by Crosby Stills and Nash

Summer breeze makes me feel fine,
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind.