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Published: July 14th 2011
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The long road continues. We have clocked in at least 1,000km Our walking continued across northern Spain from Logrono to Burgos, two major cities connected by series of country villages and agriculture, lots of fields!.
After two blissful rest days, we hit the road on 30 June (Thurs) we walked 30km from Logrono to Najera but now with much cooler temperatures so very pleasant clear skies and sunny. Najera was a very pretty town and there was a festival on that night including a brass band hitting the pavements around the entire town (several times); fireworks and drinking until wee hours of the morning.
1 July (Fri) we walked from Najera to Saint Domingo de la Calzada (23km), which was another beautiful walk through countryside, mix of vineyards and wheat crops. We stayed in a convent hotel including the reception manned by a little tiny Sister who spoke no English.
Our room was very nice apart from the single beds action as clearly no ‘matrimonial’ double beds in the convent.
The WIFI Internet password was the longest one we have ever seen 26 digits!!!!.
After our dinner we enjoyed a free concert by a local orchestra.
2 July (Sat) we left Saint Domingo towards Belorado (24km). Walk was little tougher particularly the last final 5-8km that was dirt track running adjacent to the highway and in 36 degree heat. Arrived in a lovely town and stayed in lovely ‘Casa Rural’ Bed and Breakfast (B&B). Dinner comprised of a Flintstones sized piece of beef – not bad.
We had a massive storm complete with booming thunder and lightening.
3 July (Sun) headed to Atapuerca (32.9km) which is the site where they found the earliest human remains in Europe, dating back 900,000 years+. It was a solid 6.25 hours walking including some beautiful climbs.
Camino guidebook indicated that hotel we were booked into was ‘luxury’ but it was voted as ‘horrific’ by us. We had one of the worst meals and again were grateful we didn’t suffer gastric. To top it off, next morning no breakfast as Hotel owner was no where to be found so off we went without walking with NO COFFEE – Dave was not himself #$@!
Like most of us in life, we’ve learnt you have the take the bad with the good.
4 July (Mon) from Atapeurca
we headed to Burgos (25km). This was a hard walk as bulk of it was just on the outskirts of Burgos, which is a major city (175,000+ population). We walked along river into the city, which was pretty after walking along the airport boundary fence & some industrial parts.
Burgos is a very pretty city, a mix of old historical elegant buildings with some very modern amenities and buildings.
We relaxed at our hotel before heading out for quick tasty dinner of risotto and spaghetti.
5 July (Tues) confirmed that we are officially NUTS, rather than resting today, we decided to do some of the next leg of the Camino towards Leon. We walked 11km to the next town. We even did a negative split on the return leg 11km which cut our time by 10 min.s, Dave has become a ‘power walker’ like Kath and her boyfriend on “Kath and Kim” comedy.
We met up with Alex, a paramedic from Austria who we met on our 1st day’s walk from St Jean and saw on our travels intermittently and he was looking us very strangely as we walked back towards Burgos / going in
the wrong direction of all the other pilgrims.
After this walk today, we agreed that we are DONE with walking (for a while). We now had to turn our energy watching the Tour de France every afternoon.
We had an amazing dinner of black rice paella with cuttlefish – delicious. We have a new strategy, while Dave enjoys a couple of beers, Robbo walks around and scopes out restaurant options and reports back for a confirmed game plan on the meal front.
6 July (Wed) we hit the tourist trail just before lunch with trip to Cathedral and Museum of Human Evolution – both were great to visit. The latter exhibits the major finds from Atapuerca dig sites including the 1,000,000-year-old tooth and remains.
Our last night in Spain was chilly; it dropped down to 13 degrees at 11.00pm from 30+ degrees at 6.00pm.
7 July (Thurs) – Relaxing morning before we flew to Paris so not much on the docket today except some yoga, breakfast, check out, transfer, check in, fly, collect bags, train/metro to our Paris hotel, check in………..shower, dinner, walk and collapse.
Bueno Adios (Goodbye) xx
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Simone L. Petersen
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Camino de Santiago - 'The Way'
Your blog entries are INCREDIBLE Francoise. Thank you ever so much for sharing your experiences with us. David Mitchell did part of the Camino in 2010 and enjoyed it so much that he returned in 2011 to traverse the entire trail. He will be very excited to learn that you were there too. If you don't mind, I'll recommend your blog to him. Have you seen the Emelio Estevez movie (his Dad, Martin Sheen is in it too) called 'The Way'? It was not distributed widely (mainly film festivals, etc), however it is now available on dvd. You're very much in my thoughts and I'm sending all my love, Simone oxo