A late start to the day, despite being woken up well before the crack of dawn by my downstairs neighbour. I waited for the crowd to leave and vacate the bathroom before getting myself ready to go. Pack the bike and catch up with emails etc. before being unceremoniously thrown out of the albergue at 8:15. There's a cafe across the road from the albergue which has cleverly established itself as the 'go-to' place for pilgrims looking for breakfast.
Then I had a mission. Find the local Carrefour (hypermarkert/shopping centre) to do a little shopping. One thing you learn when travelling in Europe; you can always rely on a good hypermarket to find what you need even if you don't know what it's called. And a Carrefour in France is the same as one in Spain so you know where to find stuff. I convinced the security guard to let me park the bike outside the shop and went in for my mission: Two bananas, an apple (admittedly both available elsewhere, but I figured that since I was there..), a small tube of hand cream (hands are suffering from a combination of washing clothes by hand each day as well as the exposure on the bike all day in all whether - yes, I know, I'm a softie) and the main event, a little present for myself: a bluetooth keyboard to use with the (now functional) smart phone. The blog entries were getting a bit long to be typing with one finger on a screen. So you're enjoying (or not) the fruits of my morning's labour.
Leaving town following the Camino meant the usual forced riding down one-way streets the wrong way, using footpaths, and a couple of km of gravel path before finding the road.
I chose to follow the road for the first part (a German biker had come to grief on that section Jacques helpfully told me) but later decided to turn off and follow little country roads back to the Camino. This proved to be a great decision and the ride was along some lovely peaceful (but sealed) tracks essentially following the Camino.
I stopped for a coffee and pinchos (the local name for tapas) at a little local bar. The sort of place where the fairly rough-looking locals appear and are served their regular drink without a word being exchanged. One gets a glass of fino, the other an espresso into which the server pours a generous helping of local brandy. The guy looks like he has more than one of those each day.
Arriving at Hontanas I decide it's enough for the day, even though some walkers also make it here from Burgos in one day. It's a tiny place, completely dependent on being on the Camino. But it has a nice feel to it. I meet Barbara and her husband from Poland and Marylin from Newcastle (the one in Australia) and we end up having dinner together. The Poles are doing the Camino for the second time (they were here last September). When I ask them why they didn't choose to walk somewhere else this year they have no answer. It's just the way of the Camino.
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