Even the Welsh are faster (to Burgos)
Trip Start
Aug 25, 2008
1
13
34
Trip End
Oct 02, 2008
Where I stayed
Albergue municipal
Burgos, Spain
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Now, the weather continues to be unstable, windy and rainy. Leaving around 8:30 in the morning, I unpack and don my raincoat once more. After half an hour I catch up with Barry and Maurice, the couple from Whales. The Welsh of course are barely impressed by the drizzle; they're used to that kind of weather. I personally find it annoying. Back home, if it rains, it rains good ordinary raindrops, so you know why you get wet. Here, the raindrops are so small and dispersed that they hardly count as raindrops, yet you get wet anyway. Furthermore, the road gets all muddy and slick, and the mud sticks too your boots making them twice as heavy as they already are.
Maybe having overdone it yesterday a little bit, I feel really tired today. I walk a slow pace and can feel every muscle. My left hip and my right shoulder hurt, and I sweat under the heavy raincoat. Even Barry and Maurice are faster than me and go ahead. Thank goodness that after two or three hours of miserable walking the drizzle ceases and the sky clears.
I have a nice tortilla in a bar with John and Maggie and walk with them for a while until eventually they go ahead too. The only reason why I catch up with Petra and Max is that they take a rest in bar too. Anyway, happy to see each other again after some days, we decide to take an alternative route to Burgos, avoiding the suburbs and the industrial area. However, before we part too, partly because they want to follow their guide while I am sure that the route my guide suggests is better and partly because I take years putting on my sunscreen. No concessions there though, I am very careful about my skin, as I tan very slow and get burnt very quickly.
So in the end it's me alone taking the route along the river. It seems like nobody else knows about that one, although I am sure that walking through the green parks along the river is far more beautiful than the suburbs.
It's always a strange thing getting into a city with all your pilgrim stuff, backpack, walking stick and so. It makes me feel like a stranger, standing out amongst all those other tourists and everyday people. However, as people are accustomed to the tradition of pilgrims, I don't get any looks as I walk with my 2 metre stick across the city squares. Burgos is a big city, and the hustle and bustle is an awkward contrast to the remoteness of the places I've been to in the last few days.
The refuge was renovated just a few months ago and has all the charm of a sterile five-story mass accommodation building. Resting a little bit, I meet old acquaintances - Flo, Christian, Gerd and some more, and I do a tour around town trying to find a grocery. A hard task indeed, because in the city center there seem to be only souvenir stores and the like. So I buy water and some cookies for a brazen price and get around to see the famous Papamoscas in the cathedral.
The Papamoscas is a wooden figure at the roof that moves its jaws every hour, supposingly catching mosquitos with his mouth. Actually it's not very exciting, and I wonder why everyone wants to see it. Now the cathedral itself is a whole different thing, it's huge and impressive. The tour takes me almost an hour, and if I wasn't so tired from walking, I would have spent a great deal more time in there. However, when I get out, I'm just happy to sit down somewhere.
I'm tired, I just want to rest, and maybe that's exactly the thing I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm in Burgos. I made one third of the whole thing. Time to rest for a change.
