The Big Walk

The Cyclops – Day 29

As we leave the city centre at six o’clock the next morning, great crowds of people are still wandering the streets, or queuing to get into nightclubs. The waking hours we are keeping are truly alien here.

We’ve been dreading the walk out of Burgos following warnings from other pilgrims; it’s reputedly the worst and most dangerous section of the entire camino, all along a thundering trunk road. We cast around for an alternative and manage to find another way through the suburbs, making a rapid escape. Beyond the motorway ring-road we cross limestone uplands with scattered white boulders before descending to Atapuerca, famous for prehistoric finds in its caves, said to be the earliest and most extensive evidence of human settlements found in Europe, but off limits to visitors. It’s on the periphery of an enormous holm oak forest in the foothills of the Montes D’Oca. In medieval times this was one of the most bandit- and wolf-infested stretches of the camino; no such worries today as we reach the hamlet of St Juan de Ortega.

In the very centre of the forest, St Juan is dominated by the large Romanesque church built by its namesake. Juan had dedicated his life to helping pilgrims following his return from his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A noted architect, he built a hermitage and church in this most dangerous spot and also constructed bridges over the rivers. St Juan is still only a tiny hamlet, its remoteness intact, and the wonderful forest still surrounds it; a welcome change from the noise of nearby busy roads which has plagued us on recent days.

There is a hostel here, but other pilgrims have warned us that it’s really dirty. Inside the entrance hall the staff have put up a big sign informing guests that ‘Pilgrims are always very grateful for everything they receive, and never grumble’ – whilst underneath, someone has written ‘even so, this place really IS shit.’ We decide to walk on.

Thirteen hours after leaving Burgos, we reach Villafranca and another hostel. It’s in an old school, full of broken beds and mattresses on the floor in draughty rooms still wallpapered with children’s paintings, but by this time we’d settle for anything. After we’ve showered in what looks like a broom cupboard with a door that doesn’t close, we discover why the other pilgrims talked in whispers about the warden, calling her ‘the cyclops’. She storms into the dormitory and frogmarches us new arrivals to a desk she has set up in the middle of the beds, scowling at the other pilgrims and their bags as she wanders through. She’s the first unfriendly Spaniard we’ve met, and we’re very lucky that she doesn’t notice from our credentials that we’re walking the wrong way since it seems that with any excuse she’d have everyone sleeping outside on the street.