"I´m walking on sunshine" - Burgos to Leon

This is the killer stretch in the middle of the camino; 180km through the country with a lot of it on the high Meseata where the wind can really blow. It was difficult to leave Burgos which is a fine city and a spectacular cathedral, if a bit sombre and dark in only the way the Spanish art and iconography can be.

We have decided to keep staying in small hostels although we have been to a few of the refuges. The one we went to a day out of Burgos had a bed bug problem although it seems to have been limited to another dormitory (a South African lady we met said her bed was infested) as we haven´t had a problem. Someone told us, counter-intiuitavely, the way to avoid them is sleep naked under the woolen blankets rather than sleep in you clothes and bag (they get into the linings apparently) and have as hot a shower as you can stand the next day. No, it doesn´t work for me either. Having said that we know lots of people who stay in refuges every night and most have not had a problem. I think it gives a more authentic pilgrim experience but I hate being woken by pilgrims with head torches at 5.00 am getting ready to hit the road. It just shows that everyone does the Camino in their own way though.

We´ve met some really nice people from all over the world. The most inspiring person is an Aussie lady (left) who has a swollen foot so big that she can´t get her walking boot on and she is doing 20 plus km per day in a pair of shoes. Well done Robyn. When I´m cursing my blisters I think of you. We are walking at about the same pace as two German brothers named Hans and Pieter, Irish Allan and Murray the Kiwi who would pass for a Tolkein wizard (apart from his hiking shorts). We have the "Pilgrim meal" (8-10 euro for three course and wine-plain cooking) together some nights with one or two other people joining in.

Irv and I walk together sometimes, talking, laughing and singing. At other times he goes off like a little West Wales whippet with his walking poles clacking like a metronome. At times like this we are alone with our own thoughts. He´s teaching me a lot about birds and I can recognise a corn bunting from a yellow hammer amd a crested finch from a Spanish sparrow. My favourites are still the storks who have beautiful rituals (like stretching their necks over their backs then clacking their great beaks) when their mate returns to the nest.

This particular bird has changed his plummage as the weather has improved. The Goretex has been shed and he now wears khaki shorts (a la Lofty), T-shirt and straw hat bought locally. My waist is shrinking (it looks as if my head is pin sized in this shot but it is only perspective I can assure you). Now the weather has got better the whole think has become a bit more like the film "The Way" with pilgrims meeting old friends outside sunny wayside bars. The first few weeks were more like Napoleon´s retreat from Moscow. We have been told that two walkers died on the way over to Roncesvalles so the early bit of the walk is still dangerous.

The countryside is spectacular but there are a heck of a lot of big wind farms here; enough to scare Don Quixote perhaps. The majority of the walking has been "up country" where we´ve stayed in villages (pop 250 or thereabouts) where a lot of houses are literally falling down. Once in a while we´ve hit a bigger town and seen some great architecture like this perfect Romanesque church in Fromista.

A tough 180km but now we have a day in Leon to rest our legs before the next push towards Santiago.