Today is a short, unmemorable day. It is characterized first by a proliferation of flies, second by heat, and third by a burgeoning blister that stops me early.

I say “early” but we stop at 2pm, which is our usual goal, and after 21.7 km, which isn’t far off our planned pace. It’s also consistent with the goals we’d set forth a few days ago, when we’d planned to end in Sahagun – we end instead at the next town, 4km on, after we’d decided to press a little further than planned the day before.

We get sort of a late start, and eat breakfast at our hostel, rather than walking the 3km ahead to the next town as usual. We meet up with Alice again in the morning, and walk with her for a while until we catch up with her mom, who, today, is moving quite slowly. We talk about the baked apple we had for dessert the night before, and Alice says that her mom has often made it, sometimes with walnut and honey in the core. Dorcinda asks the mom whether she treats the apple in any way when not removing the core, or just sticks it in the oven. I always remove the core and put nuts and honey in, she says, contradicting Alice’s earlier statement. Alice rolls her eyes. As we leave town, they stop to adjust something and we leave them behind.

We make  it  to Sahagun and almost immediately, the hard pavement starts to hurt my feet. It’s funny, I’ve done almost all my life’s walking on pavement, but I dread it on this trip. We buy some tea tree oil at a pharmacy, which the woman at the counter recommends for repelling bed bugs. She says it also works for blisters and itches, so I’m eager to try it despite the unpleasant smell.  We decide for a larger lunch in Sahagun, but the place only offers a menu, so we eat TOO much. Worse, we’re beset by flies and bees, and the experience is really unpleasant. I thought we’d be used to flies by now but they are just relentless here. Dorcinda leaves half her chicken uneaten. I now hate this town, and have no interest in visintg the tourist stuff of old nunneries and templar buildings.

We pass Alice and her mom again on the way out of town, and they’re unsure how far they’ll go, because her mom’s feet are hurting. We say we’re going at least to the next town, but my feet won’t cooperate either, and that’s as far as we go. I think its 4km. Just before the turn off, we stop to drink water and a pilgrim from the group ahead comes back a few paces to speak with us. Where are you going? He asks, in broken english, despite his red hair and pale skin (I’d assumed he was Irish or American). We say we’re not sure, and he warns us earnestly against taking the fork to the right up ahead. “There is a town there, but that is not The Way.” We smile and thank him and ignore his advice, stopping at the town 800m away rather than trying to press on 8km along the traditional route.

The hostel is one of those one big room types, so we pray for few snorers and pick our bunks. After showers and laundry, we head to the bar to write. And we share a menu. But the flies are thick here as well, both inside and out, and it’s incredibly distracting. I finish the wine from the menu and keep writing while Dorcinda tries to Skype Luke.

As I finish writing, I catch a glimpse of the news, where they discuss record temperatures across Spain for September, and say that tomorrow will be hotter than today, which was 94 degrees. They speak rapidly, but two of the interviewees use the word “fatal” and one says “mortal” when describing the heat. Oh joy.

We wake up early, and Dorcinda is happy to have a good night’s sleep. Happy, that is, until I point out two bedbugs in our room. One is crawling the wall and the other is in her crazy-town book, which she grabbed form the hostel bookshelf for some light reading. We check out bags and clothing, and dread the itchiness we fear will appear soon. We warn two of the other inhabitants of our hostel, and hit the road. One guy, from China via Berlin, seems a little too unconcerned for our liking, and the other, a German woman, immediately deflates, and tells us about a friend of hers who had to cut her Camino short because she got bedbugs and the itching was so bad. While we warn the Chinese guy, Siming, the last inhabitant of the hostel shushes us, annoyed at the noise. We leave her to her fate. We’re depressed and nervous.

Sheep block our way out of town momentarily, but we climb up off the path a little and wait for them to pass.

Our spirits are brightened somewhat by the appearance of two pilgrims walking the opposite direction. One has a huge white pack of some kind. Dorcinda speculates that it must be heavy, and I joke that it may be cotton candy. It’s not far off – its a huge white Teddy Bear. The pilgrims give us some coffee, denotivo, and I give 25  cents, the only coins I have left. They have made the trip to Finisterre and are walking all the way back to Barcelona. They met a week ago, and the primary partner, the guy with the bear, invites us to like his Facebook page, El Oso Perigroso, a mashup of pilgrim (peregrino) and dangerous (peligroso).

We eat breakfast at a hostel in the next town, where we get egg sandwiches, pretty big. (Is this where the douchey hospitalero corrected me for asking for “el contrasena” while making nice with all the people who didn’t even try to speak spanish?) I am amused by two very posh sounding old british women. How the one woman said with disappointment “They have no bananas here. I checked.”

In Fromista, we try to find a pharmacy and an ATM. We get some cash, but are the pharmacy is closed for Sunday, and no magical urchin appears to point out an open one as in Viana. The tourist office suggests we try the Centro de Salud – otherwise, the nearest pharmacy is out 19km away. The Centro de Salud offers  consulting for pilgrims, but only between 9 am and 10 am and between 6pm and 8pm. It’s 11. We ring the bell at the energency room and the guy doesn’t have much help to offer us.

We sit and drink coffee and read snippets from an English translation of the Codex Calixtinus. There’s a lot of writing  describing the churches, and the lives of the saints, but precious little about the route. What IS there, though, is hilarious and judgmental. Most of the water and food available in Spain is, apparently, instantly lethal, though the writer doesn’t say how he tested this opinion. He hates most of the Spanish – the Basques especially, whose language is “incomprehensible” and whose toll collectors are “truly vicious.”

From the Codex: “They come at pilgrims with weapons, and demand an exorbitant fee. If you refuse to pay, they’ll beat you up and take the money, even intrusively frisking you to get it. These people are forest savages. Their hard faces and strange language strike terror into the heart.”

The Codex complains that the tax collectors go after pilgrims and anyone else, even though they’re supposed to only charge merchants, and often grab double what’s allowed, and urges kings and bishops to excommunicate, rather than pardon, the offenders, writing  if any bishop decides to pardon them, either because he feels it’s his Christian duty or because he’s been paid off, he should be kicked out of the church.” The pass over the Pyreness is beautiful, and you feel like you can reach up and touch the sky, but in the old days, “the pagan Navarrese and Basques would not only rob pilgrims to Santiago, but mount them like donkeys and then murder them,” according to the book.

The Navarrese come in for similar condemnation, and the write says “Navarrese eating and drinking habits are disgusting” and “their language sounds so raw, it’s like hearing a dog bark.”

“These are an undeveloped people, with different customs and characteristics than other races,” the book continues. “They’re malicious, dark, hostile-looking types, crooked, perverse, treacherous, corrupt and untrustworthy, obsessed with sex and booze, steeped in violence, wild, savage, condemned and rejected, sour, horrible, and squabbling. They are badness and nastiness personified, utterly lacking in any good qualities. They’re as bad as the Getes and the Saracens, and they despise us French. If they could, a Basque or Navarrese would kill a Frenchman for a cent.

In some places, like Vizcaya and Alava, when they get warmed up, the men and women show off their private parts to each other. The Navarrese also have sex with their farm animals. And it’s said that they put a lock on the backsides of their mules and horses so that nobody except themselves can have at them. Moreover, they kiss lasciviously the vaginas of women and of mules. Everybody with sense slams the Navarrese.”

Burgos is “full of royal treasure, of gold and silver, fabrics and the strongest horses, and flush with bread, wine, fish, milk and honey. It is however lacking in firewood and the people are evil and vicious.” Galicians are “more like us French people than other Spanish savages, but nevertheless they can be hot-tempered and litigious.” What an open minded book!

We visited two churches in Fromista, and one nice church in Villalcazar de Sirga. In Fromista, we pray for relief from bed bugs, Dorcinda, praying rather more thoroughly than me. I emote “San Martin, help us with the bed bugs. Santiago help us with the bed bugs. Jesus, help us with the bed bugs.” Before I get embarrassed about kneeling at a tourist  spot and stand up to take photos like everyone else. It’s a pretty fine church, after all. Our guidebook calls it “one of the finest examples of pure Romanesque in Spain.” The other church, San Pedro, offers a “more prayerful atmosphere,” and is slightly less impressive. It also has free guitar music on Wednesdays.

The tourist office, besides offering useless advice and some maps and postcards, also has a LOT of free copies of the same garbage book that Dorcinda read the night before. We’ve seen it as well in San Bol, so every stop since Burgos. It’s Hercolubus or Red Planet, written in 1998, and it warns hysterically of a giant red planet on a collision course with Earth, as punishment for humanity’s sinful ways.

The book begins: “Humanity is spellbound by the predictions of the falsely called ‘scientists,’ who do nothing but fill Humanity with lies. Scientists distort the truth.”

And  it gets worse from there.  This is trash of the highest order, this is poison in written form. And they’ve got 100 copies to give away at a local government office!

On the way to Villalcazar, we meet up with the Danish man from San Bol, and he walks with us a while. We find out that his hobby is racing vintage cars, throughout Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I’m hot and tired, so Dorcinda carries most of the conversation.

We stop at the municipal albergue in Villalcazar, which is donativo. We check halfheartedly for bed bugs, and decide merely to switch beds than move hostels after discovering potentially disturbing signs of bugs. Downstairs, Siming, a pilgrim we met on the road earlier (from China via Germany where he’s a student) comes in and asks for cold water. I translate. The hospitalero gives him a huge bottle of water. He donates. Dorcinda chats with him a while and I try to figure out the hot water for a shower. A grumpy old Canadian woman comes in, and she’s pathetic and desperate, looking for her friends who are obviously not here. She complains about how far she’s walked and how she couldn’t possibly walk to another hostel to find them. We shrug. We’re pilgrims, lady. Then she wonders what albergue they could be at, and she thinks of asking the hospitalero who’s sitting patiently, ignoring our conversation in English. But how can I ask him that?? She cries in desperation. I roll my eyes, thinking, maybe learn Spanish, and ask the hospitalero. There’s another albergue and it’s literally right around the corner. “But how will I find it? I’ve walked so far.” I reiterate that it’s LITERALLY around the corner. I leave the room and wash my laundry to avoid any more interaction with her.

Later the hospitalero gives Siming a new pole that a man at the end of his Camino had left behind, and a lift to Carrion de los Condes. He leaves more money in the box, and the hopstialero says its unnecessary. Siming says he doesn’t know how else to say thank you. The hospitalero doesn’t understand. I translate. The hospitalero instructs Siming: “Gracias.” I’m disappointed in Siming for hitching a ride. I still believe that walking is the way to go. He was on his third day, starting in Burgos, and seemed to be going strong over the last two days in which we saw him.

We seek out the bar to write, and avoid sitting outside, where we spy the Danish man. We don’t want to be drawn into conversation. We made that mistake with Steve once, and neither of us got anything done.

Inside, however, we’re disappointed to learn that the kitchen is closed until 7 (it’s 6, and we haven’t eaten since breakfast), and to find a rowdy crowd of old men playing some game with stones on the table. I think its poker, and the stones are just chips for betting. One man has a staccato bleat of a laugh and its incredibly loud and annoying. I wonder if one of the sheep from this morning has followed us to the bar. Another man, his throat ruined by cigarettes, interjects occasionally, frightening us with a menacing rasp that would put any Hollywood villain to shame.  We snack and wait for the fancy place to open at 9 – its a restored medieval inn.

The restaurant never opens, so we snack some more at the bar. I’m on a roll in journaling, but Dorcinda pulls me outside so we can eat and view the sunset. Almost immediately, however, she starts chatting with an old German guy and we join his table. Then she goes inside to pay and seems to take a while, so I hear the same conversation, repeated this time in German between the old guy (Reiner?) and a younger, cigarette smoking Austrian woman. I stopped writing for this? We unenthusiastically make plans to meet the Italian and Dane for breakfast at our hostel.

At night, one of the two women who were dozing when we arrived is walking around in her underwear. Soon enough, the Italian is also. When its time for lights out, the underwear woman, sounding Russian, insists that the lights be turned off (turns out she’s hungarian, I think?). The Italian says yes, but at 10. It’s already 10:10.

Just before lights out, the Canadian banshee returns. She’s wandering the square outside, pathetically yelling  “Hello? Hello? Is somebody there?” I roll my eyes again, but go downstairs to see what she wants. She’s gone by the time I get there. I have little sympathy or concern however – out hostel’s door is wide open, so she could have just come in the front door if she was in as dire straits as her cries indicated. What a pill.

We’re a full day behind St. John’s recommended pace, because of our stay in Burgos, so, feeling strong, we blow past his recommended stopping point of Hornillos del Camino and press on another 5.6 km to San Bol, a hostel in the middle of nowhere.

So far, the tales of the Meseta are overblown. Brenda, Jeff, Maddie and Steve all considered it to be a dire wasteland – Jeff and Maddie bussed ahead to avoid it and Brenda called it the “missteppa”, and spoke as though it were some great trial she must overcome alone. Yes, it’s hot. Yes, it’s flat. Yes, there’s little to no shade. But it doesn’t not that different from the rest of Spain, not much different from a stretch outside of Zubiri. Not that different, from Martos, even, where I taught elementary school English a few years back.

On the way, we meet up with Zoltan, who cheerfully informs us that he’s feeling not quite so ill. We walk for a while, the second pilgrim to join us for a lengthy walk, after Steve. Dorcinda tries to talk to him about German folk music, and he says he likes electronica and more modern hip hop and indie music. He talks about getting this name from a Hungarian father and growing up without knowing him and how now he regards his dad as somewhere between a friend and a stranger, but not like a relative. He makes it to Hornillos de Camino and we press on the San Bol.

Just before San Bol, I feel an irrational panic begin to set in at the number of pilgrims we see ahead of us and around us. San Bol only has 12 beds, and we really don’t want to walk any further if we don’t have to. At a hilltop, we see an English guy with a parasol, and he’s loaned it out to a young Korean woman, who smiles beamingly from its shade. The maybe-Brazilian woman who’s been walking at the same pace as us since Burgos stops to talk to them, but we merely say hi and move on. We figure the last one to San Bol is a rotten egg, and we’re not gonna get heatstroke gabbing with some random Englishman in the hot sun. So long, suckers. We see the hostel across a field, and consider the possibility that someone behind us could cut across the field rather than walking the circuitous route around on the main road. Fortunately, no one else is as focused on the goal and no one cuts us off.

At San Bol, the hospitalera only speaks Spanish and is relieved that I understand her. She notices me translating for Dorcinda, and I explain, yo traduzco, y ella  paga. For once Dorcinda has cash and I don’t. It’s a white lie but it gets a smile out of her, and she says, of course, because she’s the big sister! She asks me to explain some hostel rules to the other guests. It’s relatively early, so we sit to write for a while after showering and washing laundry. Outside there is a cold, stream-fed pool where we soak our feet.

At dinner, only six of us eat – me and Dorcinda, a 25-year old Korean woman, two 40-50ish men from Denmark and Italy, and a 75-year-old Frenchman. I am mystified that the others – including two Dutch girls who were here long ahead of us – don’t eat. They must have brought food with them because there is literally nothing else around for miles. The dinner conversation is in stilted English, the only common language among us. The Frenchman jokes that we’re like monks, eating in silence. He’s excited at first that all different nationalities are represented, but then is disappointed that almost no one speaks French or Spanish (I’m the most fluent at either, which is pretty sad. I can confidently say “je voudrais le fromage” but not much else).

I explain that the last one to leave has to lock up and bring the key to the hostel in the next town. We talk about distances and how far we intend to go. Michel reminds us that the Camino is not a race. That’s the kind of attitude that will get you stuck with the job of locking the albergue door and walking the key to the next town, Michel.

I can tell that Michel is a talker and is frustrated by his inability to join in during dinner. Me and the young Korean sit with him a while, and let him regale us with tales of his rugby days. He was a player and helped organize tours for his French team. He’s played all around Asia and especially islands there in New Zealand, India, Tahiti, even Borneo.  It’s hard to understand him, since he’s speaking broken English and occasionally slipping back into French. He doesn’t seem to notice that he’s doing this. He also doesn’t seem to hear or respond to questions or asides, and I can only really understand about one word in three. Its tedious, but he appreciates it and we go to bed happy.

We have the whole day to spend in Burgos, the first day without serious walking since we began.  We start with a visit to the Cathedral, and end up spending three hours there. It’s beautiful, it’s overwhelming, we are sedated by our audioguides. We see Brian and Mary the old Canadians and they are rushing through.  We see an organist enter one of the side organs and listen for a while after he begins playing. I take photos of weird monsters and bizarre grotesqueries, like the painting of a devil cutting off a martyr’s boob, and a carving of a devil-man with a tail and a face in his torso in a scene dedicated to Santa Casilda. The doll above the clock, whose bizarre openmouthed grin has earned him the nickname of the flycatcher, Papamoscas.

The Cathedral is so stuffed with art that it’s difficult to take it all in. We learn a bit about the saints, many of whom have pilgrimage connections, as we do. We stop by a gruesome oil painting of a woman getting her breast lopped off by a devil, and learn that Saint Agatha was tortured and killed by a heathen Roman ruler who initially wanted to marry her. She had dedicated her virginity to god, and refused his advances, and the ruler turned his attention to vengeance and torture. Perversely, Catholics revere her as the patron of breast cancer patients. It’s a pattern among the saints, whose guidance is sought on matters more closely related to their gruesome deaths than the lives they led. Saint Batholomew, who was flayed alive, was worshipped as the patron saint of tanners, for example. And what does Bartholomew know about tanning?  His experience with flaying was probably not conducive to careful learning the craft. During his exposure to the technique, the poor saint was probably not paying close attention, distracted by incredible pain and likely making an effort to think about literally anything else other than the specific techniques used by his torturers and murderers.  The story was similar with Saint Lorenzo, baked alive, and forced to hear the prayers of cooks wondering whether the roast was properly done.  The list goes on and on. Forcing the saints, in their immortality, to constantly be reminded of their deaths and martyrdom, the worst moments of their short brutal lives, seems pretty callous to me.

We see a lot of images of San Roque and his dog, with what seems to be a frisbee in his mouth. Finally, I think. A light-hearted saint who just wants to play outside with his loving pooch.  It turns out that the disc in the dog’s mouth is not the world’s first frisbee, but bread that he carried to the saint when he was starving in the wilderness.

The art raises a lot of less-immediately-answerable questions as well. Why does Santa Catalina stand on a man’s head?  What’s with the weird devil who has a face in the torso, near the chapel of Santa Casilda? Who thought it was a good idea to paint over some, but not all of the sculptural adornments, making some of the statuary look cheap and two-dimensional? Who are those weird warrior men whose bodies are covered in hair?

We admire many other pieces that we barely have time to wonder about. The wooden carved door showing sinners in the mouth of a dragon. El Cid’s resting place, under a grand dome. A lonely cherub, cradling a skull. Griffin heraldry, in statues and wooden carvings. A pilgrim version of Saint James kneeling dramatically, hand over heart. A pilgrim version of Mary, with the shell on her crown, and the dagger/cross of saint james on her dress. Magnificent gilded altars with backdrops that stretch to the high ceilings. The lid of a bishop’s stone coffin, carved with a likeness of the deceased that was so vivid that the sculptors painstakingly carved elbaorate floral patterns into his robs and the pillow where he’d rested his head. A statute of a beheaded saint, labeled S. Victores, holding his own head in his hands like you see sometimes in Halloween costumes. I note another “cannibal Mary” for my collection – I’m always amused to see statues of the Mother and Child where the child’s head is incongruously missing. There’s a guilt-ridden example in NYC’s Cloisters museum, which sparked my theory that the mother is eating the baby like an oversized chocolate bunny or something.

We buy harmonicas but we are shocked by the prices. I end up spending 46 euro and Dorcinda spends 39. Both are Suzukis, and hers is heavy where mine is light and bright-toned. The woman at the shop, once she got rid of a customer with an obscenely crying baby, laid out a large selection of German and Japanese harmonicas for us. It was either pay up, or get a Chinese-made harmonica for 12 euro and the shopkeeper’s eternal disdain.

She was patient with our questions in halting Spanish, and she beamed when we told her we were on pilgrimage. She’d done it years ago with her kids when they were aged 7 and 8, and it was a highlight of her life. People are more human on the Camino, she told us, and I agreed. She told us she sells a lot of harmonicas and ukuleles to pilgrims these days.

We took a tourist train for 4.60 apiece. It’s a huge mistake – we’d forgotten how many of the streets were cobblestone. It’s a spinal stress fracture or broken tailbone waiting to happen. Also, the information comes in spanish, then french, then English, so by the time it gets around to saying “on your right, you’ll see…” the landmark its discussing has long since passed us by. I start giving Dorcinda a heads up from the Spanish so she doesn’t miss everything.

After the tour, we go up into a museum in an arched gate in the town walls. There’s a room dedicated to El Cid, which claims to hold his left radius arm bone.

The day has passed us pretty quickly, so we decide we don’t have time for the Evolution museum, or the monastery of huelgas. I go for the book museum which is close, cheap, and doesn’t seem like it will take too long.

While Dorcinda was visiting yet another church in Burgos, I stopped to check out a book museum. I saw that they had a reduced price for desempleados, and explained that I was unemployed in the US, if that counted. The woman selling tickets said, in English, and with a bit too much conviction for my liking, “I believe you.” A little embarrassed by her certainty, I explained that I was unemployed because I was on pilgrimage, and was pleased to learn that pilgrims got in for free. I learned a bit about the process of making vellum from sheepskin, the competition among monks for scribe work (which exempted them from manual labor) and early printing processes. They had a few originals on loan and a lot of replicas of famous old books, including a Guttenberg bible, early Encyclopedias, and those funny maps where people drew Europe in the former of a reclining woman or Asia in the former of a horse. Relevant to this trip, they had a replica of the Codex Calixtinus, the first pilgrim travelogue and a collection of official prayers and stories relevant to St. James, and a book on the Order of St James, which was devoted to defending the pilgrimage route. There were some great illuminated manuscripts and odd bestiaries as well.

We met Steve for dinner at Morito, and enjoyed some great tapas. We’re joined by Zoltan, who doesn’t eat much since he was sick earlier that day. The barmaid yells out my name with each plate that’s ready. And she yells with gusto back to the kitchen when a new order comes in. When we leave, she yells out a goodbye. It’s pretty great.

Everyone gets up far too early. It’s barely past 5 when the rustling starts. We are unable to sleep, and have actually gotten a fair amount of rest since lights were turned off so early the night before. We decide to head out, but its pitch black. Dorcinda finds her headlamp, but I must’ve forgotten to pack mine, so I rely on her light as she walks ahead. (Later, I would find that I had packed not one, but two headlamps, but they were tucked away in a hidden pocket of my pack.)

I’m a little nervous walking in the dark, and can hear ominous rustling off in the woods to my right. I’m worried about sprained ankles and animals. This is a purely modern phenomenon, I think – no medieval pilgrim would try to get such a predawn start with wolves or highwaymen on the roads, without the light of the sun to guide him.

We hear rustling very close to the road and stop short. Dorcinda’s light illuminates the rear half of an animal, a white rump and leg. She pans slowly to the left and I hold my breath in anticipation. It’s a cow. Placidly standing just off the road in the woods. A little later, I’m startled by the sight of a cow even closer, just a few feet away from me, with horns and everything. I’m legitimately afraid for a second. This thing could totally kill me in the dark, as revenge for all the burgers I’ve ever eaten. Stealth cows. Ninja cows.

We stop for breakfast and coffee at a charming little place called El Alquimista in Ages. Everything is lovingly organized, shelves neatly stocked with food and drink, with dark wood floors and ceilings, and vines tangling in the ceiling above the entryway. The pride of place, however, goes to a wooden fertility statue, between the bar and the bakery counter. It’s massive erection reaches to its nostrils. We snap a photo and send email it to Mom while we’ve still got wifi access. We’re joined by Brenda and Steve for breakfast.

Close to Burgos, we encounter a Canadian from Nova Scotia with one of those names that works either as a first or last name. I thought Dorcinda was racing ahead to talk to the guy, but she says he stopped her to say hi as she was passing him. Kirby was a cornball, cheesy as hell, sounded like a school teacher.

You have a wonderful singing voice, I’m very much enjoying it, he told her. Thanks, she said, and intended to keep walking. But he kept engaging. His parents, who hated nicknames, gave him a name that would be unusual and hard to nickname, so they searched up and down the coastline to make sure that no one else had named their kid Kirby before the name.

We take the “scenic” way in to Burgos. We’re not sure where, exactly the path diverges, and as we stop to discuss, a security guard standing outside a factory sees us and points us to the river route.

What a guy, we think! A manifestation of Santiago himself! Jesus, not the devil, at the crossroads. As we hesitate, two young men from Montreal approach and start talking to Kirby, after noticing the Canadian flag on his pack, and we take the opportunity to ditch them.

Half an hour later, we are walking around the Burgos airport. The first sign of civilization after that is a scrap yard. Where’s the goddamn river? Where’s the scenic route? That was no manifestation of St James, it was the Devil himself, leading us astray! We stop for lunch, and at the bar, older Australians ask me to translate their questions about the bus. One of their group is ill, and they’re taking a bus ahead to keep their schedule.

We continue on, and eventually, reach the river and a park that extends all the way to Burgos. Okay, we think, maybe that guy was not the devil. Maybe he was just a helpful security guard who was pointing us to a route that was poorly named. The park seems endless, though, and our pace flags dramatically as we trudge through it.

We skip a goodbye lunch with Jeff and Maddy (Dorcinda doesn’t even tell me about it!), who are bussing from here to Leon, and make for our hotel. We reserved a duplex, but for some reason, it didn’t quite register that that meant more stairs. Oh joy.

The showers are good though and we steal soap and shampoo. I had bought soap in Pamplona but lost it almost immediately. We meet Steve and Brenda for dinner and Brenda tells about her choice between a laid back job near Valencia and a higher-paying but more stressful position back in the Netherlands. She says the Camino is helping her think about it, but it seems like her mind is already made up to stay in Spain. We get one more drink after Steve and Brenda leave, then crash, with the luxury of not setting our alarms for the next morning.

[unedited]

We get up pretty early at Belorado (I’m out of bed and brushing my teeth at 6:10). The hostel was closed for breakfast so we walked into Belorado and had coffee with a bunch of Guardia Civil. I was limping almost from the get go, never having quite recovered from my misstep on the mountain a week ago, and Dorcinda suggests taking a bus to Burgos, as Maddy and Jeff had planned. I am loathe to give up on the day and the integrity of the walking tour so early in the morning. We press on.

We try to get coffee in the next town and nothing is open. A pack of peckish pilgrims, unfamiliar to us, British and younger, mostly, follow us in our fruitless search. We press on, and meet Maddy and Jeff, who have changed their plans to take the bus from Ages, saving only a day, because they heard that San Juan de Ortega’s albergue, in an old monastery, is very nice. They walk with Dorcinda a while, after she fell behind due to a bathroom break in the bushes. She actually fell into a puddle and has changed her shoes

When they catch up to me, Jeff and Maddy pause to adjust packs or something and we split up. On a hilly stretch, a car drives slowly in the opposite direction of pilgrims, telling them, in English and Spanish, about a new hotel and restaurant in the town up ahead. He worked in Kenucky, near the Tennessee border, and his English is pretty good.

We stop just below the hill that leads up to San Juan de Ortega, where the driver recommended. We get coffee (our second) and sandwiches, which are much larger than we’re used to, so we save half for later.

Today, I’ve seen a few pilgrims with pilfered sunflowers on their packs. The pilgrim tax, just like the grapes we snatched in Rioja. There are a lot of unfamiliar pilgrims on the road, and they seem jockier, younger, less friendly, with fewer “hola”s and “buen camino”s than we’re used to. One guy with a short dark beard and sunglasses walks in the opposite direction, and we smile and say hi, like normal. He doesn’t acknowledge us, doesn’t change his frowning expression, and barely even moves to get out of our way (both of us are walking towards the center of the road). We laugh as soon as he passes, probably before he’s out of earshot.

He puts the grim in pilgrim, I say. He puts the douche in pilgrimdouche, Dorcinda says.

Later, we hear stories about the same man from Steve and Brenda, and from Jeff and Maddy. When he passed Maddy and Jeff he refused to acknowledge their greetings, and after passing them, shouts “Joyeux Noel!” – Merry Christmas, in French. When he encountered Brenda and Steve, he also ignores them, and shouts some gibberish after passing. He’s devolving, the Madman from the Meseta.  (Later we hear that Alice and her mom ran across the same man, at an earlier, more civilized stage. He told them “a true pilgrim walks home” when they commented on his direction).

We pass the Romanian from the day before, in Santo Domingo de Calzada, but he’s pressing ahead and doesn’t seem interested in talking. He’s on a 33km day.

There’s a monument to 300 people executed here, I think for supporting the old democracy against the facsist rebellion that ultimately won the civil war.

We stop at an “Oasis” of the Camino, with hammocks, donativo refreshments, and music – Elvis, when we arrive. Aint Nothing but a Hound Dog. Return to Sender. A hippyish woman doles out refreshments (we get a cup of lemonade and a slice of watermelon) from her van (Also the source of the music) and has her young daughter hand out stamps to the pilgrims. There’s a pole with signs and distances – 5000 km to USA, New Hampshire, which I think is bogus, but actually turns out to be pretty close. Its a nice break in a long 12km stretch that’s almost all uphill between the last town and out destination.

At San Juan, there’s just one bar. There are a lot of people we recognize – Steve, Jeff, Maddy, Brenda, Alice & her mom, the Romanian (whose name is Christian). We get the last two lower bunks, and Dorcinda talks for a moment to an old couple from Colorado.

The guy seems like a blowhard so I avoid joining the conversation, but hear Dorcinda explaining what nettles are – Ortega means nettles, so the town is St John of the Nettles. Jeff and Maddy show us some stretches or leg elevation exercises, and Jeff grabs his buttocks  while propping his legs up on the bunk above. He tells me not to be shocked, and I say hey, you do you, walk your own camino.

At dinner, we sit with Steve and Brenda and Maddy and Jeff, and notice Alice, alone in a sea of older folks hand picked by her mother to pack the table before Alice arrived. Dinner is horrible, among the worst we’ve had, with ketchcup rice, gross garlic soup, and chicken?

Everyone is pooped so we go to sleep early.

[unedited]

We leave Ciruena early, and pass Jeff and Maddie on the road. We meet them again in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, which has one of the silliest pilgrim legends that we’ve ever heard.

The story goes that a local woman fell in love with a passing pilgrim boy, and when he refused her advances, framed him for theft by slipping some stolen silver in his bag. He’s hanged, and his parents come to fetch his body. When they do, they find him, still alive, at the end of the hangman’s rope. They appeal to the mayor to cut him down (which is dumb, just cut him down your damn selves!), and the mayor refuses to believe it. He’s just sitting down for dinner, and tells them, that boy is no more alive than these chickens, plucked and roasted. At that, the chickens, roasted and all, get up and start dancing on the table. The boy is cut down and lives happily ever after. It’s a petty sort of miracle, focusing more on a “screw you!” moment for the mayor, who is not the story’s villain, than that ACTUAL miracle of a hanged boy coming back to life, after a period long enough for his parents to get word back in Germany and make the long-ass trip to Spain to retrieve him.

The upshot is that the cathedral now houses live chickens, and has for centuries, which is a pretty cool way to stand out.

We enter the Cathedral with Jeff and Maddie, who decide not to pay the 3 euro entry fee. We wander around for quite a while, long enough for rain to come and go outside. I’m looking for relics and chickens in the architecture at first, but my attention is soon drawn to a very random selection of displays of miniatures. They have castles with Warhammer and Lord of the Rings miniatiures, including a recreation of the battle for helms deep! There are also superhero displays and lego versions of cities along the camino.

We get a pizza for lunch in Granon, and move on. In Redecilla del Camino, we see a sign offering massages for pilgrims, and knock on the door. It’s closed until 4pm, but the woman, a volunteer, offers to take a look if we need medical attention. Inside, she takes one look at my swollen ankle and pronounces, tendinitis. She is less sure about Dorcinda’s mysterious foot pain, but gives us both the same treatment, a partial shave and a blue stripe of medical tape from the trouble spot up the leg. She tells us what we should have already known – rest, ice, compression elevation. She says, if you can’t rest completely, try to take it easy – instead of 20k days, do 10, 15. We maintain poker faces and nod gravely – we’ve been doing more like 25 – 30, and today ends up being another long one.

We consider stopping at both Viloria de Rioja and Villamayor de Rio, but both are pretty much ghost towns by the time we talk through them. We press on to Belorado, catching up with the Brierly itinerary despite our very slow first day.

At Belorado, we stop at the first hostel we see, just before the town proper. It’s late, and we ask for a private room which isn’t available. What they DO have, however, is a 20 bed room, which we have all to ourselves, for the meager price of 5 euro each.

We are spent, so we try to wash our laundry in the machine, but there’s no soap anywhere so we wash it by hand as usual. We take advantage of the luxury of a dryer, since we got in late, but it is not efficient at all, and ends up costing about 3 euro (more than the 2 advertised) before everything is dry.

[unedited]

We stop for second breakfast in Najera, which is a nice old town. There are red cliffs and caves which remind me of Arizona. We  pick up Steve, who separates a bit from his group to walk with us.

We walk with Steve for a while, and chat easily, it makes the km pass more quickly. Topics range from Brexit (Steve is firmly in favor) to cybersecurity (the Chinese are trying to get our data through our Pokemons go!) to wine and architecture and the Knights Templar. We pull into Azofras, where we see Maddy and Jeff getting coffee. The local albergue is highly recommended because, instead of the usual large room, they have a lot of small double-bed rooms.

We get to Azofras (“a tranquil village with a declining population of 250”) and are feeling pretty strong. We stop for patatas bravas and chicken wings. With Steve, we decide to press on to Ciruena.

Jeff, seeking to ward off the possibility that Maddy will be tempted to join us and press on, immediately takes out his book and starts arguing against it.  The albergue in Azofra has only double rooms, which is quite a luxury. He exaggerates the distance, and then levels a deadly glare at Dorcinda when she questions his estimate.

Finally, he reads a description from the book that paints Ciruena as a partial ghost town with boring uninhabited suburbs, and confusing arrows that lead pilgrims to whatever business happens to be open, rather than the road out of town. “They try to cheat pilgrims!” he says, practically in hysterics. Maddy calmly agrees to stay, seeming not to care too much one way or another.

Jeff was wrong on the distance, but Steve has his own questionable interpretation of the Book of John. He thinks that each stage is supposed to represent about one hour’s travel. We look again – it’s 8km, and its at the end of the day for Brierly’s itinerary. There’s no way that’s right, we think, but we don’t bother to argue.

It’s not right. The journey is at least two hours and feels like more. The sun is pounding, and worse, we are walking nearly the entire way on hard pavement, which is very unforgiving on our already-tired feet. For once, Dorcinda has the worse of it, and I lend her my pole for support.

Ciruena is, in fact, mostly a ghost town. We pass a golf course (which offers a special pilgrim discount) that shows no sign of activity, and many, many, soulless blocky apartment buildings that are abandoned, for sale, or sparsely inhabited. There are vacant lots for sale. Eventually, we make it to the old center of town, which features old buildings that are run-down, abandoned, or for sale in approximately the same ratio as the new buildings further down the hill. The guide says the town’s population is 20, and we believe it.

At the albergue, we meet back up with Steve, after separating on the way there. They perform a switcheroo – Steve, who’d requested a room at the other place, has been directed to the albergue, while we are directed to the related Casa Victoria, where we are given a room with four beds. I speculate that they didn’t want to give four beds to a single man, and didn’t want to leave the four-bed room entirely unused. The guy from the albergue quickly ushers us into his car, our packs in the trunk, for a two-block ride to the case rural. We debate later whether this violates our pledge to walk the whole way. I decide that it doesn’t, especially since we walk back the same way about an hour later.

We are inclined to skip the communal meal, and the hospitalero, who could be played by an aged Robert De Niro in the movie, tells us that the bar sometimes has food and sometimes doesn’t have food.

We ask at the bar, and the barman gravely shakes his head, so we decide to join the communal dinner after all. We head to the albergue, where we join Steve, a German, a Dutch couple, and an old Belgian woman. Steve had talked up his German language skills, to excuse his nonexistant spanish, and gets a chance to show them off. The German barely understand what he’s saying until the Belgian woman repeats it. He shrugs and continues speaking in English. The food is, well, it’s not good. It’s spaghetti, followed by chicken. I don’t think its so bad, but Dorcinda is horrified. However, she keeps eating the spaghetti, to the point that our host offers to make more. She smiles and, with just a hint of desperation, declines his offer. We tell Steve we’re planning to go to the bar later, and he says he’ll try to join us.

At the bar, there are a lot of children and old people, but no one who seems to be young or middle aged. Where did all these children come from, I wonder. We start writing, me writing fiction and Dorcinda journaling, before Steve joins us with a smile. He talks a lot, and Dorcinda does her best to keep his attention, but it totally ruins my flow. I get the worst of both worlds, feeling like I’m being rude as I stare at my computer screen, but also failing to make any meaningful progress.

Steve asks how much writing I’ve gotten done as we say goodbye. “You were writing up a storm!” He says, impressed.

I tell him that I’ve written a little bit, not as much as I’d like, but a start.

I’ve written only about 250 words. Pathetic.