Arrived: Burgos 6:00pm
Total hour: 10.25
Total kms: 51.5
Accumulated kms: 1031.3
Weather: Overcast and windy windy windy
That's right, today I walked over 50km! I'm quite proud of myself, even if I was a little delirious toward the end. Last night in Belorado Filipe and I were trying to work out what to do - we knew of a place that was open at the 27km mark, and possibilities at around the 30km and 35km marks. We decided to just walk to the first one and make our decision.
We walked separately as we have been doing of late, and just before we got there he had caught Agnes up, the French girl I was keeping pace with in France for a while, and I caught them up. We stopped at the open albergue and discussed our options. If the possibilities were closed, we would have a long walk to Burgos. We decided to take it.
Needless to say, neither of the possibilities were open. In fact, we didn't even see the second one at all. We made good on our deal and walked all the way into Burgos, a total of 51.5km. We were feeling very pleased with ourselves, and expected to be greeted like heroes. Instead, we were greeted by two guys who stayed in Belorado last night.
Now, they left after us. They were eating breakfast when we headed out, the contents of the bags all over their beds. We walked at a pace of over 5kph, including up two small mountains, and didn't see anyone overtake us. After some quizzing by Filipe in Spanish we discovered they caught two buses to get here before us. We were happy again, until we met two other guys who were also in Belorado, and walked as well. They were the two Spanish guys who have walked from Norway. They plan to walk another 50km again tomorrow. This definitely deflated our heroic status.
I've just put clothes in the dryer and the woman from the albergue has just come and told me she's turning all the lights out in ten minutes. At least I think that's what she said...
I should mention here the rules of Real Pilgrims. I started this a week or two ago, and we've added some new ones (the last two) today:
1. Real Pilgrims don't take shortcuts.
2. Real Pilgrims don't ever go back.
3. Real Pilgrims don't catch the bus.
4. Real Pilgrims don't take elevators (we have to walk up six flights of stairs to our beds here).
I mainly made up the last one to be a bit obnoxious and see if Filipe would go along with it, because he's really keen to be a Real Pilgrim. He has. Even with sore legs he's now refusing to take the elevator. It's pretty funny, even if it is a bit mean.
The other exciting landmark of today is that I passed the 1000km mark! I've left it until now to mention it because there are at least five other people I've met who have already walked much, much farther than that, but it's exciting for me at any rate. I think I have less than 500km to go to get to Santiago now, and a little under 100km to Finisterre. Only a couple more weeks and I'm done!
This was taken at night and I couldn't get the photo any less blurry, but it's the famous cathedral in Burgos.
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