Camino Day 15

Today was 12km of lovely walk through forested hills.

The first part of the walk was through oak forest carpeted with bracken and heather. Then it switched to pine forest, which just smelled fabulous. Then back to oak for a while and more pine. Made for a lovely walk.

We only did 12km today because this is a messy bit of the walk. This section was always the bit we found hardest to organize. It was going to be a couple of small days followed by a long day walking into Burgos (a notoriously ugly part of the Camino). But then Bob, Ana and the family decided to come up from Madrid and spend the weekend with us – which was not going to work if we had a long day’s walk.

So today we had the nice walk to San Juan de Ortega and then we got a taxi from there to Burgos. The completionists in us are not happy, but it makes most sense. We are planning on spending four days in Burgos so we might come back and fill in some or all of the gap. We will see. San Juan de Ortega is a sweet little village with a big pale Byzantine church surrounded by flocks of swallows. It was a pleasant place to wait for our ride to Burgos.

In Burgos our hotel is directly opposite the fabulous gothic cathedral, but there was no sitting about as we immediately met up with Ana, Bob, Jean and the girls for lunch. The center of Burgos is just beautiful. It’s not just the Cathedral, but the surrounding buildings, the amazing gate to the city, the tree-lined colonnade alongside the river.

Now we are taking a moment to rest before meeting up for more eating. Jennifer and my room looks out directly on the front of the Cathedral and music is drifting across the square. All is good and, for the moment, I can forget the Camino shame of having caught a taxi.