Last night we stayed in a historic pilgrim hostel dating from the middle ages. I’m pretty sure my mattress and pillow were part of the original furnishings.
We were in a large room with about 40 beds. Every bed had pilgrim in it when the lights went out at 10 p.m. The air in the room was damp and smelled like sweaty clothes. After about 15 minutes, the snoring started up and continued until the lights came on at 6 a.m. Anne and I had been up for about an hour at that point, awakened by pilgrims who were getting an early start, rustling through their gear and shining their flashlights.
At dinner in the albergue the night before, Anne and I had sat across the table from a French woman who was on the final leg of a 1200 km walk from Geneva to Santiago. She has done the trip in segments over a two year period. Some legs she walked with friends; some she walked alone. Her final leg from Pamplona to Santiago, which she is walking alone, goes through some large and medium sized Spanish cities.
The French woman—she never told us her name—told us that she had visited Washington D.C. and New York City but had no plans to return to the U.S. She said that it was “too crazy.” She said that she worked for the International Red Cross, primarily in Afghanistan. She said that when she was in Afghanistan neither she nor her guards were armed because “violence just causes violence.”
The albergue didn’t serve breakfast, and there were no cafes or markets nearby, so we got an early start, walking again on the wide track over the mesa that we had been on yesterday.
After walking for almost an hour, we saw the village of Ages in the valley below:
All the hungry pilgrims from San Juan Ortega descended on this cafe in Ages. It is very unusual for a cafe in Spain to be open this early—it was around 7 a.m.–especially on a Saturday morning:
This is the church in Ages:
We walked on to the next village, Atapureca where we saw this church, which, like the church in Ages, was locked:
The trail then headed uphill to another long mesa:
Coming down from the mesa, we could see Burgos in the distance, our destination for the day:
In the next village, Villaval, we bumped into several old friends that we hadn’t seen in several days, and had wondered if we would see again. We saw Dirk the German, whom we have seen at several masses along the way, and who on a hill outside of Pamplona told me that he was fascinated by all the newly injured pilgrims because of their connection to the ancient tradition of suffering on the Camino. Anne and I decided that Dirk must be part of an interesting backwater of German Catholicism. We also bumped into two young Asian women—one named Kiki, I never caught her friend’s name—who were solemnly carving up an enormous steak at a cafe in Puente la Reina. Kiki pointed to the steak and told Anne, “this muscle will become my muscle.” We saw a quiet young woman, traveling by herself, who described her nationality by saying that she lives in Sweden but is Hungarian. We met her in Orisson on our first day of traveling. And we probably saw for the last time a group that we also met on our first day in Orission, Eliaine, Mercedes, and Mercedes’ husband. They are about our age and are catching a bus in Burgos for Leon and then for Santiago. They had planned to walk the entire way to Santiago but injuries have forced them to stop their walk.
After leaving Villaval we walked along a road: 
We turned off the road and walked several miles through farmland, until we reached a park leading into Burgos:
A river ran along one side of the park, the rio Arianzon, that flows past Burgos:
The park went on for miles, and the closer we got to Burgos, the more people joined the path.
Anne is walking with Mario, who said he is a Croatian living in Germany:
Anne and I have felt very safe this entire trip, walking through parks, cities, and rural areas. Until the fear of violence, particularly gun violence, dropped away, we did not appreciate how constant it was and how much of a price we paid for it. The French woman we met in San Juan Ortega is right—a country where women can’t walk alone and where there is pervasive fear of gun violence—is too crazy.
Here is one of the gates to the old part of Burgos:
And here is the cathedral:
Next to the cathedral is the church of St. Nicolas, where we went to Mass on Sunday:
Here is the alter at St. Nicholas:
Our hotel is right across the square from the cathedral. We are spending an extra day in Burgos, resting and applying ice:
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