Mon 28 Sep - Day 14: Villambistia to Atapuerca 24km

267km walked. 518km left to walk. 

Our fantastic albergue San Roque in Villambistia. Most of our non-sleeping time here was spent on that outdoor terrace to the left. 
Breakfast nook. A small table outside the locked bar area with seating for two. It felt a bit like an American motel breakfast; crap coffee and a severe overload of sugar. 
Hold on, what is this? Well, there are notes you fill in if you want your backpack transported to the next albergue. 

It turned out that out of our group of 6, only the oldest (me) and the youngest (Sophie) carried our own backpacks today. Hmmm...
Modern pilgrims. Smartphones and free wifi. 
An oldie but Goldie. In 6 different languages. 
The ever changing weather was cool, almost cold initially as we walked into a very low lying fog. I even had my gloves on for a while. However, the fog soon burned off with blue skies and sun for the rest of the day. 
Today's selfie. Yes, I was in a good mood. 
Now this memorial was sad. 
According to the signage, there was a massacre here in 1936. 300 people, objecting to Franco's dictatorship were killed here. 
And this sign said that 30 of those massacred people were found here in a
mass grave in 2011. I didn't like this place at all. 
The road to Santiago de Compostela goes on forever... it seems. 
There were 3 tourists walking in front of me. Now, hold on. These 3 are in our group. Just not carrying any backpacks. 
The homestretch towards Atapuerca, today's destination. Plenty of cows on both sides of the track but no fences. 
Atapuerca has its own Stonehenge. A sort of Minihenge.  
The earliest human remains ever discovered dating back 900,000 years were found 3km off route from the Santiago route into Atapuerca. We didn't walk the extra 6km to check out the side as we had already done 23-24km, but below with the guys is the spiel. 
Atapuerca was one of those towns again where you half expected two gunslingers to ride in from either way, both muttering something like "this town is not big enough for both of us". Loose dogs and chooks roaming around (that latter was actually true). 
The two gunslingers. OK you caught me out there. The right shadow is me and the left is Sophie. 
The gang with our newly found buddy Burt from all over the Netherlands. Yes, that's true again, second from the left with Sophie, Aaron and Ben.  
We finished the night by demolishing two bottles of vino Tinto out on the patio of
the albergue. Yes, we picked those up at the local supermercado where I went to the facilities and the manager asked me to come back in there to... Check out the little green frogs at the bottom of a plant that was in the corner. Which I did. And yes, I poked the cute little green frog and he was real all right. The local in general are very very friendly and mostly funny people. 

Ben, the always thirsty one, was for once first in bed. Maybe a bad day today as he will probably be back in form tomorrow. 
That's all folks. Tomorrow the "big smoke" of Burgos. 

No comments:

Post a Comment