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Day 12 – El Camino – Villafranca Montes de Oca to Burgos

Villafranca Montes de Oca to Burgos, making good out of a not so good situation. Aaron and I caught the bus, though our next destination, Cardañuela-Riopica was not marked on the schedule. The guy told us to get off at Attapuerca.

35km
~1.5 hours
1X ibuprofen tablet; new socks (Quecha brand) which are now sweaty and smelly
sunny but cool in the morning; sunny and very hot for the rest of the day
16€
– Albergue: 5€

When we got off the bus, we went to the bar to ask for directions. They told us that we were on the highway to Burgos, which made sense, but there was no direct road to the otherside of the mountain range.

It would have been a seven or so kilometre hike to make it over to the village, but this was not guaranteed as their were no sign posts to our destination.

We decided to wait for the bus to take us into Burgos and try our luck travelling backwards from there.

While we were waiting I decided to stick out my thumb to hitch a ride into town. After about 50 cars and 40 minutes later, a car randomly pulled out of the carpark next to us and told us to get in.

There were two guys, nice and everything. They spoke Spanish only and very fast, but we understood that they would take us into the centre of town and show us the albergue there. (Even though that was not our plan).

The driver was weaving his way in and out of the traffic on a 80km/h zone highway (single carriage way). Aaron reckons he was topping speeds up to 140-150km/h by the speedo. I didn’t even notice, I was just happy to be driven into town.

Once in town, we headed straight off to the bus station. The information desk told us that there were no bus services (ever) to Cardañuela. The nearest stop was 7km away, which would have put us in a similar position as at Attapuerca.

We got in touch with Matt and Sam and laid out our options: 1) stay in Burgos and meet them in the morning 2) stay in the next town and meet them the next evening.

It made sense for us to stay in Burgos and we did. The albergue here accommodates 150 pilgrims, so it would be easy for us to get a bed. At 5€ each it was the best option in any case.

Matt and Sam asked the hosts at the albergue in Cardañuela if they could drive them into Burgos, to which they kindly agreed. To sweeten the deal, the guys gave them 20€ for the generosity of these hosts who would have otherwise hosted the four of us.

Aaron was being a bad tourist and not taking photos! Ha. I asked him to pose for a photo and then later played on his embarrassment and asked him to take this embarrassing photo!

We said we would meet at Plaza Mayor, the central part of town. It’s a big area, covers the river side and the surrounding areas of the old city. I walked around for about 30 minutes before I found the two sitting not 100m away from the albergue. Quelle chance!

Tonight, as a little treat to ourselves we are going to an Irish Pub tonight. Hopefully we can get ourselves a nice meat and veg meal, with lots of veg.

(Edit) The Irish pub we went to had run out of salad! Everyone was disappointed.

I ordered a plate of fried chicken wings, what a treat! We shared plates of patatas bravas (chips with spicy sauce), morcillas de Burgos (deep fried black pudding cakes with rice), and calamari rings.

After dinner, Aaron and I had a go of the pokies. No winnings but lots of fun nonetheless.

Here is the view from our albergue.

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