off the map

Spain

Hot and flat and long
The road winds through near-nothing...
Where are we, again?

Today we had to leave the camino, sadly, at least the walking part of it. The bikes simply can't go as quickly over unpaved paths and the like. So we split, but not until after siesta.

Before siesta, though, we made distance! We woke up at balls o'clock and got to see the sunrise over the mountains (more hills, actually... nothing like los Pirineos!). We also ran into some construction where we noted a rather hilarious mechanical flag man waving his flag robotically up and down (I hope you've been looking at our Picasa photo albums... we actually even took a video of this guy because we were so amused).

The road led us up a pretty substantial (400m or so) climb to a ridge rimed with wind turbines. We learned more about what it is to Bike Harder, and hated our lives for a little while as we crept towards the top lugging our gear. We cheered, though, rather immediately when Spanish drivers would pass by with a friendly honk and wave. Some shouted out their windows for us to keep going and that we were almost there. I love the camino.

We made it about 80km before a siesta in Burgos, a large town with a pretty nifty cathedral and lovely parks winding along its rivers. We paused for a few hours for lunch, a nap, some bike maintenance (chain cleaning!), and a trip to the bank. Then it was onward, to the west!

Beyond Burgos, the camino follows several unpaved footpaths and roads, so we elected to take the N-120 in the direction of León. This was an interesting choice, due mainly to the fact that the N-120 disappears from our map for a few pages. A few kilometres out of Burgos, we had no map to tell us where we were, but we knew that we were heading to León. So... that was kinda fun.

After Burgos, everything is flat for a long, long way: practically until León. We made another pretty good distance after our siesta, and we landed in a small town called Melgar de Fernamental. We kept forgetting the name of this town, but it sounded something like "Trogdor," so we mostly just called it that. Teehee. :) Then we ate delicious food for dinner (we cooked it in a park, much to the amusement of some kids playing fútbol nearby), and it was off to sleepytime!