The Big Walk

Burgos, City of El Cid - Day 28

It’s a whole week since we last had a day off, and our aching bodies aren’t allowing us to forget. We head over to the Cathedral, packed in amongst a maze of streets, a Gothic giant which dwarfs that in Leon. It’s covered in delicate filigree stonework, with projecting baubles everywhere, looking like someone has finished off the great structure by going mad with an icing gun. The vast interior is so full of subdivisions that there’s no real feeling of open space, and it is surrounded by no fewer than fifteen side-chapels, some large enough to be churches in themselves. Each is different; one is painted in overpoweringly bright colours, another in a striking two toned black and white, whilst others have great domed ceilings and are filled with paintings. All have fascinating relics: most shockingly, one has a fourteenth century life-size crucifixion, the Christ figure having real human hair and nails, and the skin of a water buffalo – to us it’s gruesome sight, but one approached by believers with the greatest of reverence.

We buy a ticket to go into restricted parts of the building, including the greatest chapel of all, that of the Condestable, where every object is considered to be an artistic masterpiece. A caretaker follows us around to let us through various locked iron-gates to other parts of the cathedral, each in turn. It feels strange to be on our own in these chapels, with the other tourists peering through the iron railings at us from the other side – an insight into life as a zoo animal. Afterwards, we climb up to the castle ruins to get the only elevated view we’ve had in the Spanish cities.

We head to a deli for picnic-lunch supplies, ordering ten slices of top quality lomo (preserved pork loin); it’s a good job they slice it thin as we didn’t notice it cost sixty euros per kilo. We’d have been stuck with tins of beans for the next few days. Relieved, we head over to the city outdoor swimming pool, surrounded by grass lawns full of bikini-clad sun-worshippers, and while away the hours catching up with news from home, having managed to find a British newspaper in town.

In the evening we settle down at one of the outside tables of a bar on the main pedestrian thoroughfare. The bars are as packed as those in Astorga, but here everyone is watching the passers by as the whole town seems to have come out for a paseo or evening walk. There’s always something to see from the immaculate outfits to children zooming around on scooters or begging to be bought helium balloons shaped like dinosaurs. Later we make up for last nights’ experience with a bar meal of raciones, giving us a chance to try morcilla, Burgos’ own version of Haggis, which is made with rice instead of oatmeal. It’s absolutely delicious.