Joe woke up and called it off.  His left leg is really bothering him and he is worried the daily walks are making the damage worse.  It is the right call. 

I gave it a couple minutes of thought, then decided to bail with him.  Just won’t be the same finishing without my bro.  My pic of the number for the Taxi turned out to be weirdly well timed. 

While waiting for the cab, I caught this little video of an old soldier doing part of the Camino with his horse. 

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We called them and made the train to Madrid just in time this morning.   I left my Sriracha on the platform.

I am in the bar area right now updating my blog.  We fly out tomorrow morning.  

I have decided that today is new shoe day !   I have been stretching the life out of my old treads as much as possible, but the time has come to switch.   The old shoes have been worn smooth.  

I was going to toss them, but decided instead to leave them where hikers store their shoes.  May they remain there for the ages. 

Oh boy do these feel great.   It is so nice not to feel every rock I step on.  

Today was mostly a flat hike through farmland 

Saw a church

Saw a head 

Checked out a ruin

Made a video for Clair and Jamie 

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Ok, so kings and queens probably didn’t live in those ruins….but I’m sure some important people were there at one time or another and Grandpa’s are allowed to embellish.   

I was intercepted by my German friend Tom who slowed his pace a bit and had a chat.  He is 27 years old, has a technical degree and was working as a rough equivalent of a civil engineer on the railroad system.  He visited Thailand on vacation and something sparked.    

He is super fit, always smiling, and has a wonderfully positive outlook on life.  We talked all kinds of things.  Motorcycles (he has a 750 Suzuki GSX), relationships, sailing, hiking, and my own various adventures.  He has decided to change up his life.  After the Camino, he is joining the German Army for 2 years, then who knows what.  

His parents want him to stay home, but I don’t think you can keep a spirit like his locked up.  This boy is going to leave a positive footprint on the world.  I wish I could somehow check on him in the future, but alas, long distance hiking is usually like this.  You meet these bright sparks, share their energy for a while, then they drift off down the trail.   I am very happy for him.    

We split up and I hiked on into Castrojeriz. The town is dominated by an old ruin on top of the hill.  I didn’t have the energy to check it out, but it would make a good side trip. 

Walking into town I saw this sign with the number for taxis.  I don’t know why I took the picture, but it turned out to be serendipitous as I would find out later. 

I liked this sign

We checked into the hotel and had pizza for lunch.  It was soooooo good.  While munching on our pizza we had a chat with Jeff, a retired SoCal Gas dude from Bakersfield.  He recently retired and is kind of lux hiking the Camino.  He transports his pack due to a neck injury and is generally staying in the better hotels.  Nice guy. 

Joe and I did some planning for the next 5 days and started reserving spots.  

Joe and I did our Mother’s Day calls, I got to do a short FaceTime call with Alice, Stephanie, Adam, Jamie, Claire, and all the sisters.  It was great to see them, but could not really talk much.  Too noisy and the lag makes it hard to say much. Called my Mom and sister who are doing well. 

Then we turned in for a nice quiet sleep in a real hotel room 🙂

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.  

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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.

Today’s goal is a little longer, ~28km.  Joe and I got our crapped packed then headed into breakfast.  Simple stuff, bread, jam, and biscuits.  The coffee had been brewed last night an left in the pot.  We nuked it back to life.  

I sat with Shelly chatting while we picked through the stuff on the table.   Shelly is a retired IT consultant from Kansas.   She worked at Oracle in the 90’s and is something of a PL SQL slinger.   I’d met her briefly about a week ago when I was doing my rain soaked solo push to Logronos.  

We spent much of our time debating on exactly how many biscuit cracker things we should eat.  We settled on 2.  Munching our way through our meager offerings, I made an executive decision and snagged 6 more which I shared with my new partner in crime.   So after 5 biscuits, a hunk of bread, 8 hour old coffee, and an apple, I was ready, no make that HUNGRY, for the day to begin

Pretty much infinite wheat fields here, plus an occasional field of this stuff.  Some kind of grain I assume. 

Joe caught up with Kemi.   I was behind descending from a long rolling hill.  Joe slowed up and had a quick hello convo with her.   Nona, Kemi’s dog, found some fresh cut grass along the roadway and started rolling in it which cut the conversation short so he kept going.   When I rolled up, Nona was back into a walking mood now so she took up a position between Kemi and me and trotted along.  We shared idle chit-chat, jokes, etc.  We talked until the next cafe where she wanted to stop for coffee.  I carried on. 

 

TIL that Vitoria de Rioja was founded on 1019.

Passed through Belgrade.  A decent sized village. 

Outside of town it started raining.  Fortunately, I bumped into a gas station on the edge of town.  I have learned to never pass up a gas station.   They are filled wall to wall with tasty snacks.  I pulled some chips, mm’s, and a delicious Spanish chocolate bar.  Ate my junk food while putting on my rain gear. 

Rest of the day was a mostly light rain walk to Villafranca.  Got hailed on for a bit as well.  According to my weather app, a nasty storm was coming in, so aside from the gas station, no stops today.

Our destination tonight was an albergues behind the San Anton Abad hotel.   We checked in at the hotel desk.  This place is swanky.  The albergues was super clean and modern.  Nice to see some of the swanky hotel money leaking into the albergues.   Joe and I had an awesome 3 course meal in the restaurant.  Then settled in our room of like 8 people.  

Later that evening, it began raining really hard, which quickly turned to hail.  I took this picture for Alice after the worse of the storm passed.