Camino Day 20

Back on the road, we chewed through 30 km today.

Last night we watched men dressed in cloaks carry a float with a cross on it out of the Cathedral square and across the bridge. Very atmospheric way to end our stay in Burgos.

I can’t really describe the path out of Burgos because we left just after 6am. As a result, once we were out of the main town all we could see was black broken by the firefly glow of head-torches bobbing through the darkness. We had quite a long time of that until a deep red dawn broke behind us.

The Camino from Burgos has the reputation of being boring, but we didn’t find it so. There are huge sweeping fields and the path winds into the far distance, but there is still lots to see. The fields are very rocky as is the path. There are windmills on every ridge. Butterflies flit about the edges of the track. And there are villages every five or so kilometers.

As is our usual approach we walked fast and stopped often. The first and second stops for coffee were pretty good. Unfortunately our lunch stop turned out to have no shade and lots of flies so we didn’t stay as long as planned. Overall we covered the 30km today in a bit under 8 hours including stops.

Around the 30km mark we were wondering what had happened to our destination. Then we crested a ridge and found Hontanas nestled in the valley below us. A little street, surrounded by red-roofed houses, winds down to a church square lined with bars. Not a lot here but it’s a lovely town.

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