We knew today’s hike was going to be a brutal 37+km, so we left before dawn. The temp was like 36 F when we stepped out into the cold.
First thing out of the gates is a long ~400 meter climb uphill on a gravel road. Last night’s hail / rain combo has put a lot of water on the mountain and a bunch of it is flowing down the this road. We were dancing around streams for a while.
Most of the forest we walked through is a carefully managed tree farm. They are mostly planting softwood trees in sections. I stopped 4 times on this hill to remove a layer of clothing, then add a layer, then dig out my gloves, finally reducing a layer again. No rain so far, just cold.
Stopped in Barrios de Colina for some breakfast. Our criteria for choosing was a place with a closed door and a heater, food optional. It was cold today. Turns out the food was pretty good. Sally and Mel, sisters from down under, popped in so we had good breakfast conversation about the wine industry in New Zealand.
Off again into the cold. I took a few pictures, but to be honest, I don’t remember much besides stopping over and over again to add / remove layers. We had a second smaller climb to deal with.
Apparently there are some digs nearby for ancient humans who walked the area 300,000+ years ago. Caught up with Sally and Mel admiring all the stuff. They were surprisingly fascinated. I took a picture and kept going.
Had another 150m climb over the last of the hills. There was a small cross at the top. Pilgrims have been stacking rocks under it, so I added one of my own to the pile.
A few k’s on, at the bottom of the hill, I stopped at a small cafe for a short break. It was not raining yet, but it was coming. I bought two beers and chatted with a young Japanese gal Hikuro for a few minutes. She was all sad that her French companion had left the trail yesterday and she was alone again. She was attractive, intelligent, and her English was pretty solid. I told her she would have new friends in a couple of hours.
I had pulled out ahead of Joe and figured he would be about 10 minutes behind. Wound up my convo with Hikuro when I saw Joe coming down the street. Joe was in determined hiker mode, eyes on the ground, maintaining his pace. I stood in the street with my two beers in hand directly in his path. He almost ran over me, heh.
Back on the route, we stuck together for the next phase of our approach to Burgos.
We passed a few more small villages.
We walked the perimeter of a major airport, which took forever. Off in the distance there was an industrial plant belching steam. I spent the next 45 minutes examining it. It is a big facility. They had a few token windmills on the ridge above it, probably an attempt to go green, haha
Bumped into a huge, orderly scrapyard next to the plant. My guess is the plant is smelting alumina or steel. The crazy thing is I saw dozens of semi truck bulk haulers rolling up one after another to a loading station. It would dump a full load of some kind of ore into their trailer in 30 seconds, it drove off, and the next one moved up. Very efficient.
Well it started to rain.
Joe’s phone was dead. So I took the lead with my 25% charge. We were both getting tired at this point. He was concerned that we might miss the hostel on our way into town. To ease his mind, I told him we didn’t need to worry about the hostel…..we had still had 6 km to go. This did not brighten his mood.
We went under an to an under pass and got some brief shelter while collecting ourselves for the next push. It was a nasty graffiti covered, trashy spot. It is hard to describe the feeling. We are cold and tired. Cars are wizzing by above us and we are surrounded by trash. The only good thing is that it blocks the rain. This is the bottom.
We walked on for a bit through the rain and reach the outskirts of the city. I stopped at another underpass and figured out where our hostel was….it was ANOTHER 4 km away. It was here, in the depths of our misery, that we learned the app’s distance estimates do not distinguish the edge of the city from the center of it and Burgos is a big f’ng city.
We spent another hour walking along and endless city park that parallels the river flowing through town. In another time, this would be a pleasant walk.
Got to the hostel located downtown, which turned out to be a nice place.
Joe had a horrible day. His water bladder failed and leaked all over the interior of his pack. His phone was dead, his watch died early in the hike, his legs were hurting from the unhealed shin splints, and we ended up walking what turned out to be 41km 1/3 of which was in rain.
I felt ok, but was totally spent. The only bright side was that the hostel was nice and I found a sporting goods store to replace Joe’s hydration pack.
Joe went turned in early and I hung out drinking beer with a couple of kids from Oregon (George and ??) who were hiking with a really nice German dude named Tom. George had wrecked his knee from pushing too hard and was going off trail, so today was his last on the Camino. I turned in around 10:30.