Burgos to Hontanas

33.6 km
Up 301 m Down 289 m

We did not have a good night's sleep. As I reported yesterday our beds were two bunks in a corridor of two sets of bunks. The other set of bunks were occupied solely by a German speaking woman.

When we arrived she had told us all about the hostal as she had stayed here last week! Our suspicions should have been raised, a proper pilgrim never revisits a hostal, unless he is returning from Santiago and that's three or four weeks away!

I had also noticed that our neighbour had put some belongings on the bunk above hers, so people would think it was taken. Again behaviour that a true pilgrim would not countenance

At about 4:30 she returned from town and went to bed, every time we went to our bunks or got anything from our lockers we would hear her muttering at us.
(How can anyone go to bed at 4:30 p.m. and expect to sleep for 15 hours is beyond me).

By 10:00 we were in bed and the hostal staff had turned of the lights and we both went to sleep. Burgos is a lively city on a Saturday night so we both put in earplugs. At about midnight we were both awakened by our neighbour standing by our beds shouting at us, apparently we were keeping her awake and should leave the hostal. We don't think either of us was snoring particularly loudly, (Lesley would have told me if I was, & anyway snoring is part of hostal life)! The 'lady' got short shift from us and was told to use earplugs like the rest of us or stay in a hotel! After such an unexpected outburst in the middle of the night neither of us slept particularly well.

I can report that the Burgos night life continued past 4 am. However, unlike in a comparable British town, I didn't hear a single police or ambulance siren.

This morning our neighbour had the cheek to wish us a good morning, in English so clearly for our benefit. We both ignored her.

Thinking about everything, it's obvious that the woman is not a real pilgrim, but the worst sort of leach on the Camino system. Cashing in on the fact that the city of Burgos offers pilgrims a bed for the night in very pleasant surroundings, for only €3, when she would have to pay €50 or so to stay anywhere else. What was even more galling, was that she was sporting a scallop shell on her rucksack, which is the pilgrim identifier.

Despite our night, the Camino goes on, and by just after 8 we were on the road and heading out of town. It was the first time we could talk together about what had happened, and as a result we did not follow the way markings, but some other pilgrims, and got lost. At that point our faith in humanity was restored when a passerby, seeing us looking at our guide books, told us where we should be and how to get there.

After we left Burgos we came to the fabled Meseta, something that writers about the camino either love or dread/hate.

One of our guidebooks describes it as a relative wilderness. What the Meseta is, is the bread basket of Spain, long rolling hills, covered in wheat fields for as far as the eye can see. Any villages are tucked into valleys or folds in the land. Overhead, you see the occasional circling bird of prey, and ahead, the only thing to break up the sea of corn, is an occasional wind farm. We love it, there are no cars, no Tarmac, good tracks and open countryside.

Tucked into one of the folds in the countryside is the hostal of San Bol, a quirky place we had read about in "Travels with my Donkey".

The hostal itself appeared to be shut, but we had read in our guide book that the spring beside it has healing properties for bad feet. As Lesley is on her third round of blisters and I am on my first alongside other foot problems, we decided to give it a go!

We took off our boots and socks and plunged our feet into the stream coming out of the spring pool. The water was freezing and within a short time unbearable, so with a short invocation to St Bol we took our feet out of the water, and once re-booted set out again. It's to early to tell if the cure worked, but I will let you know in the next few days!

On the Camino in Spain