Cycling the Spanish Meseta (Sept 2015)

Burgos to Hornillos del Camino 22km

By Allan Brown:

We left at dawn, with our new steads beneath us and pedals churning. It was great. In the early morning light we were zipping by peligrinos like formula one racers.

We had scouted our route out of town the day before while the city was setting up for the Vuelta de Esoana race. There were some barricades being set up and streets were being watered. Va room! It was nice to have a city street all to yourself, I could hear the crowds roar, cheering us on and then we came to a barricade causing us to walk our bikes down some stairs to the next street killing our Speed Racer fantasy.

We then followed the Camino arrows, which came to us at a near blur and promptly blew past one turn into the big park. After about a half mile we returned pedaling slowly and a police officer at a barricade pointed to the park’s gate opening that we missed.

This park is featured in the movie, The Way, when the group leaves Burgos and the gypsy boy is carrying Martin Sheen’s backpack, “to the city’s gate”. It looks great on film, but it’s actually a park gate opening into a side street. We continued on to the Camino until we hit dirt and a public tennis court. That was our pre-run for the following day.

We rode along the park this morning on one of those awesome bike lanes that look like little streets, including dashed lines to separate the lanes and traffic signals for bikes only.

We quickly reached the dirt path and within an hour were out on the trail. We loved it. After an hour or so, we took our first break in Rabe de Las Calzadas, taking in some water and snapping some photos near the church.

Hey, want to know a good Camino joke? It’s clean. It’s your answer for when asked where anything is located; all you need to say is “it’s by the church”. If you want a real death stare from your hiking/ biking partner at the end of a long day, offer that up for when asked where the hostel is. Another is ” followed by a gentle river valley” or GRV, which is what you say follows any climb. That one is right out of the guidebook.

So after Rabe de Las Calzadas, there was a short climb, followed by a gentle river valley, into Hornillos, where we grabbed a snack from the mercado and used the WC.

There was this great mural on the right side of the street. We were giddy with the amount of distance we were covering with biking compared to walking.