Actually I´m 18 odd Kms short of Leon in a town called Mansilla de las Mulas... So, there I was, halfway through, feeling strong, thinking I would be picking up some time on some short stages, when... It looked like such an innocent thing. A little bocadillo, with an omlette filling. It was a couple of hours to dinner and I´d walked about 40 Kms that day, so I thought, why not? The guy suggested he warm it up for me - I was amenable. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I bit into it and discovered that it was packed with seafood. That and a Cerveza con Limon cost me $3.50 - bargain! It was at dinner that I first noticed. I suddenly felt very tired. Well I thought it had been a long day. ... read more

So I went to a bullfight. It´s not something that I´ve ever really been attracted to (certainly not in the Ernest Hemingway way...). But it was fiesta in Burgos and it was there! So along I trotted with Henrik from Sweden and we watched three bulls killed before we´d had enough. Then we went and had hamburgers... Bullfights are always held up as the quintessentially Spanish thing - that which shows that Spain is different from everywhere else - both in a positive sense (the heroic individual facing death with casual disregard) and negatively (the bulls die!!!!) We are told that the Spanish passionately cling to this difference and the bullfights as a consequence. Well not on a hot Tuesday night in June they didn´t. The corrida was as best half-full (about 3000) people and it ... read more

You ain´t no punk you punk You wanna talk about the real junk! (Garbageman - The Cramps) I wonder if this is the first time that The Cramps have been used to make a metaphysical point? Well if it has it was probably with Can your Pussy do the Dog? anyway... SOOOOOOO, enough of that... there reasons for using The Cramps quote are twofold. In conversation with a keen psychobilly fan (reason one for the reference), the view was expressed that the camino was a good means of clearing psychic debris from your life. It´s the equivalent of a bin night for your brain - a spring clean of the psyche... To give you an example from today. I was looking forward to making a detour off the camino today and visiting the monastery at Cañas, ... read more

Actually I´m in Los Arcos, but it´s not in the list so Estella is close enough (21 Kms away). I´ve spent the last couple of days in a bit of a catch up phase with walking. Yesterday I did 29.5 Kms from Cizur Menor to Ciraqui and today 35-ish to Los Arcos. The scenery now actually looks more like Spain, if you were to imagine it - big blue skies and wide expanses of brown (although they are actually wheat crops so it´s a bit deceptive). It poured with rain yesterday morning which provided the first experience with rain. I don´t want any more please. Today was warm and I had to walk in the afternoon for the first time - not liking that much either at the moment... There were only six people in the ... read more

Like a blister in the sun (Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes) Yes the dreaded ones reared their heads today. Not too bad but I´ll need to keep on top of it to make sure I´m ok Other than that, today was a walk of 27.4 Km, not counting the fact I had to turnaround and go back to Roncevalles because I forgot to fill my water bottle. Luckily I´d only gone a couple of hundred metres. I could blame the group of half a dozen pilgrims who had just returned from Santiago at six in the morning to take their photos under the famous ´Santiago 790Kms´sign with their completed compostella certificates. I could, but that would be a lie... The last five Kms today were hot and I thought that I had missed the ... read more