Camino de Santiago, Part 3. Naverrette to Burgos

The Cathedral at Burgos.

Our departure from Naverrette was delayed because Shelly's boots were missing! After a few frantic minutes of searching, a very sheepish looking Irishman came down the stairs and placed the shoes in the rack, he had picked them up by mistake. We were relieved to have Shelly's shoes back! We had to walk six kilometers to get breakfast at Ventosa, then continued on to Najera, a nice little town set against some cliffs. We lunched there then walked into the "Zona Natural" on the west side of town.

Leaving Najera via the Zona Natural.

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We continued to Azofra, a small "Camino town", whose main reason for existence is to support the pilgrims. A very nice albergue there, with 2-bed cubicles. Here, I went to the Saturday evening Mass at the local church. In a beautiful old chapel, the sparsely attended service was in Spanish of course, but easy to follow, it's format almost the same as our masses at home.

The next stage to Granon was a rather dreary one, cloudy and threatening rain but no real downpours. Lunched in the nice little city of Santo Domingo de la Calzada then up to Granon.

The albergue in Granon was a memorable one. It is a parish albergue, located in the upper floors of the annex to the local church, St. John the Baptist. We were led to a large room and told to find a spot on the floor! We were provided mats to sleep on. We were then invited to come to the communal dining room at a certain time to help prepare dinner.

The sleeping room at Granon.

So we all helped prepare the salad and spaghetti dinner and cleaned up afterwards, under the supervision of our energetic hosts. Later that evening, we were brought to a balcony in the church and had a sort of prayer/meditation meeting. It was a fun experience, and I really recommend staying at this albergue to anyone doing the Camino. 

Next day we were off in the dark, stopping for coffee and crescents at Redecilla, where we ran into David and Debbie from Maryland. We walked to Belorado then on to our planned destination at Tosantos. Although the albergue was open, the local cafe was closed for the week so we decided to push on the Villambistia.  Here we were able to get laundry done, have a few drinks and watch other pilgrims pass by. Saw David and Debbie pass by. Saw Shelia and Jim (from England), who we had met earlier and had taught a couple of card games to, so we played cards with them after dinner.

The next stage led us to the hill country past Villafranca, ascending into the clouds. The dirt path eventually became quite broad, really wide. We decided that it must be a logging road, although the trees in the region look a little scrawny to me. We eventually began to descend again, entering more open country which featured some lovely oak trees, not unlike the foothills of the Sierras back home.

On the way to San Juan de Ortega

San Juan had a really large albergue with a restaurant, but no beer! By this point, beer had become something of a necessity to ease the discomfort of our feet! It was still early so we continued through Ages to Atapuerca. This town is a UNESCO World Heritage site because the earliest human remains ever discovered in Europe were found here. We met up again with David and Debbie, Shelia and Jim, and we all had a nice dinner at a local bar. The proprietor was a bit of a character who has a collection of post cards from pilgrims from around the world. I'll be sending him one, too!

The next day it was on to Burgos! We followed a route that eventually took us to a riverside parkway that led into the heart of town. After stumbling around downtown for a while we came to the massive cathedral. Then we pushed on through to the far side of town and found a very nice little hotel near the university where we called it a day.

Yeah, we felt that way at the end of the day, too.

We had planned to go back into town and explore, but we were just too tired! We found a place that advertised hamburgers and that sounded good right then. Alas, what they served was not at all like the pictures on their menus! American hamburgers were difficult for the Spanish to replicate for some reason!

I should take a moment to describe our daily routine: We usually walked to about 2 or 2:30, then looked an albergue. After checking in, there was wash to do if you wanted a steady supply of clothes, often this was done in a sink and the clothes hung out. Then we would take our showers. That done, we would usually go and look for a cafe for a quick drink, maybe we would see some other pilgrims we knew and would chat or even play cards with them. We never cooked dinner, we would go find a "Pilgrim's Menu" or "Menu del Dia", which were usually quite reasonable. Back to the albergue to rest and write in our journals. Lights out was usually around 10 PM. Lights came on by 7:00 AM, sometimes the albergue had a light breakfast of coffee and toast, often we would get a breakfast at a cafe along our way. And so the routine started all over again.