Date: 17 September 2018

Departure Time: 09:00am
Arrival Time: 09:20 am
Distance: 20.2 kms
Cumulative Distance: 303.4 kms
Percentage Completed: 32.82%
Accommodation: Hotel Mesón del Cid
Weather: Hot and sunny with afternoon storm – 28 degrees

Today was the fastest walk so far. It didn’t take long to walk from the front door of the hotel to the waiting taxi. Yes, Mark succumbed to his blisters and decided that “discretion is the better part of valour.” It was at Atapuerca last year that he acquired an evil blister that plagued him for weeks and hence he thought it would be sensible to have a forced rest day. This idea was strengthened by the fact that the walk from Atapuerca to Burgos is probably the most uninteresting of the whole Camino.

We think we have contributed to the archeological body of knowledge. Atapuerca is world renowned as the site of the first Europeans, where they have found 800,000 year old human remains. We just think that Cro-Magnon Man probably also got blisters in Atapuerca (doesn’t everyone) and couldn’t be stuffed walking any further.

We arrived at our hotel in Burgos at about 10:00 am, hoping that we could leave our backpacks there as check in time wasn’t until 2pm. What a joyous moment it was  when they produced our room key for us.

We have spent a lovely day wandering around Burgos, with the highlights being a visit to the Cathedral and the citadel/castle. Tonight we are catching up with pilgrims we met at Orisson and St Jean Pied de Port. Tomorrow is a planned rest day that we are very much looking forward to. We have a lovely hotel room overlooking Burgos Cathedral. We are just hoping the chiming church bells don’t continue all night. It’s a tough life but someone has to do it.