We have walked 282 kilometres. 282! That’s like walking from Canberra to Sydney. I just measured it on Google Maps. Canberra to Sydney is 284 kilometres. And it’s taken us 16 days. 16 days to go the same distance we would normally go in three hours in a car. We’ve never walked this far. Not in one go. My feet get tired sometimes.

It’s strange. It’s a strange way to travel. Slow. Yet each day seems to have little spare time. We wake around 6.30. Pack our bags and begin walking by 7.30. The first five to ten kilometres seem easy. We prefer to eat before we go, but that may or may not be possible. This is Spain and while this whole thing is set up to support pilgrims, there is a lack of urgency about it.

On a Sunday, your albergue will feel no compulsion to provide breakfast before sending you out the door. And the next three towns may or may not have a cafe. If there is one, it may or may not be open. We always seem to find something sooner or later though. Cafe con leche, tortilla de potatas (potato and egg slice) and a chocolate croissant being our preferred morning stop.

Kilometres ten through twenty are not too bad either. My energy surges after we’ve eaten and it carries me through. I’ve been noticing these things when normally I would not. After that it gets a bit harder. By twenty kilometres, four to five hours will have passed, but I don’t seem to notice. All of a sudden its mid afternoon. I can also tell because by this time my feet are tired.

By 25 to 30 kilometres everyone is ready, or a bit past ready, to stop. We find our albergue. Check in. Shower. Poke about town or the local church or find a beer and a glass of wine. Maybe we play a little cards. Maybe we don’t. Eventually it’s dinner time. Pilgrim meals are fun. Sometimes too loud. Sometimes hard to chat across language barriers but always upbeat and cheery.

I loved our host in Sansol. She was an Italian lady who had fallen in love with a Spanish man when they walked the Camino a year or so ago. They weren’t sure what they were doing with their lives but some connection to the Camino was important to them. They sent emails to hundreds of albergues looking for opportunities. The email reached the owner of the Palacio in Sansol the same week she had decided she would close. Her father had spent years restoring the place, he had died and she took it on for the next few years but now she felt she was done. The rest as they say, is history.

The two lovebirds stepped in and took the place on (only about a month ago). I got the impression however that they had little background in hospitality. She had a penchant for swearing and taking the Lord’s name in vain, with occasional cries of ‘Jesus Christ!’, as she grappled with multiple pilgrims arriving all at once or when accidentally serving bread to a gluten free peregrino. ‘Jesus Christ don’t eat that!’, she cried on that occasion, racing out of the kitchen and across the dining hall to pluck the bread away from a pilgrim who no doubt would not have eaten the bread anyway.

We’ve seen so many wonderful things already. Beautiful things and yet at any given moment the reality of the Camino is as likely to be a gritty, graffiti ridden underpass, or a stroll past an electrical substation or noisy highway as it is to be through the gorgeous byways of county lanes, villages, vineyards, forests and fields. Generally speaking it is more of the latter than it is the former.

We’ve walked for 5 days now since leaving Logrono. Staying in Ventosa, Cirueña, Belorado, and San Juan de Ortega before arriving here in Burgos for another rest day. We’ve picked up our mileage too, covering more than twenty kilometres each day. The day into Belorado was our longest at 29.85 kilometres according to my watch. That bothered me, so Emma and I walked around the block before stopping at our albergue, just make sure we could say we had walked a full 30km.

The day we left Logrono we walked with Guy from the UK and Danae from the US. We had spent the morning with them the day before, exploring Logrono itself. The only reason we did that of course was because Paul had lent across the table at a bar we had stopped at for lunch days before and started chatting. The Camino is fun like that.

We had explored the cathedral, the pilgrims fountain and the pilgrims square. And then we walked with them for a splendid day. I stopped taking photos and listened to Guy share his story. He has been on quite the journey. It’s not my place to reveal that story other than to say he had discovered that when he is walking, the voices in his head run out of things to say. Guy seems to have a way of collecting friends as he goes. I’m very grateful to him for sharing the way he did. His story gave context and scale to my own. It reminded me that while I am the centre of my own universe, there are so many others making their way through life in so many different ways.

The days walk from Logrono flew by. Kilometres melting into the background. We went past a wetland, over a busy highway, past the ruins of an ancient pilgrims hospital and into the heart of La Rioja – Spanish wine country.

Vineyards started appearing and then increased in number, interspersed with the endless ocean of wheat and barley. The countryside is so neat. We’re told that at other times of year it is all brown, but now it is a festival of colour, a patch work of loveliness set to the chirping birds who never seem to tire of their cheery disposition.

The second day out of Logrono the sky decided to put on a show. Thunderheads appeared on the horizon, to our left and to our right. They grew steadily as we walked until their shadow consumed us. The scene played out slowly, only to be observed at all because we weren’t whizzing by at 110 km per hour. I was reminded of a concept I had read about which I think was called slow or deep time, where life and activity pass at the pace of the natural world rather than driven by the clock.

I felt overwhelmingly well on this day. All was right in my little world and the scenery and company was filling me up. There was a lightness in my chest that has been absent a good long while. We kept walking.

The third day out of Logrono started with a gorgeous show of early morning light. Khia discovered the first blister of our trip on her big toe, as if she didn’t have enough other ouchy bits to keep her challenged. She’s a trooper though and there is resolve in those legs to be admired.

The day ended in Cirueña. A town with an eerie history. Just before the financial crisis in 2008 the developers had swept in and installed a golf course and around 10,000 apartments and homes with promises to sell a country club lifestyle in the heart of the Rioja wine region. Cirueña’s population now is around 280. Our guide book described it as a town of the zombie apocalypse and that’s how it felt. Paul and I pretended to be zombies, after carefully checking none of the inhabitants were watching.

The storms were back the next day, only this time they did not just cast a shadow but erupted right on top of us. We ate lunch under the roof of a church as the rain came down and we thanked God for his protection. I pondered whether he saw right through me though. Perhaps he did because not long after leaving that town the storm came (storm appropriately translates to tormenta in Spanish) and there was nowhere to hide. For two and half kilometres it poured down, lightning crackled and thunder rippled. The water was cold as it wet our feet, the only part of Emma and me not wrapped in waterproof fibres. Then the rain became hail biting into Khia’s bare legs and face. I felt calm. Strange for me in such a circumstance. Emma grinned from ear to ear. Khia moved quickly, powered by adrenaline and Paul had fallen behind playing with his umbrella.

We arrived into Belorado not long after the tormenta had passed and chose a restaurant for dinner, which of course happened to be where Danae was staying. Of course we bumped into Danae for dinner – this is the Camino!

The next day was Khia’s birthday. She awoke with a giggle with thanks to balloons by Emma and stayed behind in town for a massage with thanks to Paul. Could there be a better gift on the Camino?

The day we walked into Burgos got off to a rough start. It was a Sunday and our beautiful albergue in San Juan de Ortega did not serve breakfast that morning. Nor did the town after that, or the one after that! Yikes. I promised myself I would increase our donations to Plan International. It sucks being hungry and caffeine deprived. Three hours without food and we were beginning to get desperate! Finally we stumbled into Villalval where there were cafe chairs with umbrellas hoisted high. Our hopes rose and then our hearts surged as we saw every peregrino on the conveyor belt of Saint James seated, eating and drinking in this otherwise blink and you will miss it little town.

We went on, across a bridge over a highway where Emma and I stopped and waved at the cars and trucks and motor bikes whizzing by below. To my delight the trucks and cars and motor bikes nearly all waved back, flashed their lights and honked their horns. There is love for peregrinos in Spain. Many more locals than not look up, smile and wish you a Buen Camino.

As it is, I am sitting on the fifth floor of an apartment building with views over a magnificent gothic cathedral in the centre of Burgos. My feet are not as tired as the day before. Which is good. It’s 180 kilometres across the high plains of the meseta before our next rest day in León. We’ll get there. Slowly.

And just for fun, a few more photos from my cats of the Camino collection.

And for even more fun a few photos that I just wanted to post.