Walking the Camino de Santiago
Back on the road to Burgos after lunch, and there’s more road walking – despite what the map below indicates. Just past the edge of the village, somebody has painted this encouraging sign on their driveway. The villages here as we get closer to the city definitely have a more suburban feel to them, and it’s difficult sometimes to tell […]
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Sometimes Francine refers to the Camino as “eating your way across Spain”. It’s only partly a joke. Since you’re walking 20 to 30 kilometers on any given day, you quickly develop an appetite well out of the bounds of your usual eating habits. Couple with that the amazing regional varieties of cuisine, and even the lowly menu del día or […]
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Knowing that you’ll be carrying everything with you for a month, you try to pack light. It’s never light enough, as a long string of “free to take” boxes in the albergues along the Camino will attest. We pack our fears. Still, I don’t know of anyone who brought a clothes iron. Now a coffee machine… You’ll notice that this […]
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I appreciate good signage, and this one is great. Where’s the Camino? Where’s water? Where do I get my stamp? This sign has you covered. Mind you, all of these things are within sight of each other, so perhaps the sign is overkill – or maybe the locals got tired of answering the same questions from exhausted pilgrims. Date: 12 […]
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About a half hour after starting down the hill, we arrive in the village of… well, probably Cardeñuela Riopico. At least, that’s what it seems to be, when I compare my photos with Google streetview. It’s getting to be lunchtime, and whatever marked route we’re taking, it has nothing to do with the map below. It was closer to the […]
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Near the beginning of our virtual Camino, February 2020 Yesterday my beautiful bride Francine and I finished walking our virtual Camino from Lourdes to Santiago, a distance of roughly 957km. You’ve heard of staycations? This was a staymino. It took us just over a year. At least I got one thing accomplished during lockdown! We mostly walked around our neighbourhood […]
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This section of the Camino can be a little confusing on the maps. My notes are sketchy, and the map below in no way agrees with the map I actually had with me at the time. So that town in the distance may or may not actually be Villalval, which may or may not have been the next village we […]
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Marking the top of the hill we just climbed, Cruz de Matagrande stands at an elevation of 1082 meters. This is the highest point we’ve reached so far in Spain. Higher elevations, of course, were to come, but not for another ten days. Date: 12 April 2013Place: between Atapuerca and Orbaneja (Province of Burgos, Castilla y León, Spain)Today started: San […]
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After what seemed like a long, long climb to the top of a hill, we are greeted by fencing and barbed wire. The Camino runs along the border of a military zone, which somebody told me was an artillery range. In any case, we were not expecting this at the top of the hill. The road here is broad – […]
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This is Viola walking on what may or may not be the remains of a section of Roman road. It was seriously hard going, and I don’t recommend it for long. In a way, I hope it was a Roman road. Two thousand years or so would certainly excuse its poor condition! Date: 12 April 2013Place: between Atapuerca and Orbaneja […]
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