Day 16. Burgos

I had a heavy walking day ahead of me, so I opted for a 6:30 am start. Also, we were expecting rain, forecasted to start at about 10:00 am, so I wanted to get as far as I could before the showers began. For the first 5-6 kms, the terrain was muddy, with a thick, sticky texture that made walking difficult causing a lot of slip-sliding. And the people I met along the way had stayed in the same hotel I was in.
Once I passed them, I met nobody for the next hour which was very unusual. After that the only person I met was an elderly French man who suddenly popped out of the woods about 50 feet ahead of me. He shared with me that he owned 6 film/sound editing studios in Paris and Biarritz and it was now a family business. He is planning to do the whole Camino at a 12 km/day pace and 15 minutes later I found out why - he had a prostate issue causing a sudden need to pee, so off he went into the woods again. I don’t know what’s going to happen when there’s no woods.
I continued to the first village, about 12 km from where I started this morning, and there was nothing open, so I continued, but still hardly anybody on the trail. After going through another small village and seeing nobody along the way, I started paying close attention to the signage. We have three ways of assuring we’re on track: yellow arrows, Camino shell, and following other pilgrims. Since there were no pilgrims, I had to pay close attention to the other two. At one point I had not seen another pilgrim for over an hour, but following the arrows led me to path that ended with a T-junction to a busy highway, with no arrow indicating if I should go right or left. Since going right would have had returning to where I came from, I turned left, continuing on a busy highway, but there were no arrows for at least half a km, so I stopped and backtracked feeling I may have taken a wrong turn. One km back, I met two Spaniards , Raphael and Louise (likely misspelled but that’s how he pronounced it) who assured me I was on the right track. Raphael only spoke Spanish, but Louise conversed a little in French. I stayed with them for about 5 kms but difficult for me to maintain their pace.
The problem with this section is that there are few villages, and Lon stretches without accommodations. I’ve heard of some pilgrims taking a taxi to Burgos to get accommodations, then rehiring a taxi to return them to the same spot the following day. Because of the expense, I’m sure many just stay in Burgos.
As I got closer to Burgos, I did meet a few more pilgrims, but there was one area where road construction had us pretty close to fast moving vehicles for half a km. Also, we did have to wear raincoats, but only for an hour.
Overall, I did the 36 km (and a little extra) reaching my hotel by 3:45. Sore feet, but no blisters. The hard part was at the end. I had reached Burgos by km 32, and hoped I was close to my hotel, but Burgos is a big city- took me one and one-half hrs to get there
Tomorrow I have a free day in Burgos.Read more