Distance traveled: 20.8 kilometers

I had originally planned to only do another half day of walking out of Burgos. Many people take a day off in Burgos in order to take advantage of being in a city of 180,000 people and all that that entails, but I was so glad to be able to walk properly again after the week of blisters that I wanted to keep moving. I think doing a half day out of Burgos was my way of splitting the difference.

It felt strange, though not in a bad way, to walk out of town alone after having been continuously with my group for over a week. It took about 45 minutes to get out of the city and into the countryside; fortunately, the way out was much more pleasant than the way in. Most of the way to the town where I’d planned to stop was actually like a giant park, and I encountered a lot of small groups of local cyclists out for their Sunday morning ride. I found it so funny to think of locals using the Camino recreationally!

It wasn’t even 1:00pm yet when I arrived in Rabé de las Calzadas, and I didn’t feel at all ready to stop – mostly because I just couldn’t imagine what I would do with myself for the rest of the day in this small town! I grabbed a coffee and a to-go sandwich from a cafe serving some families who’d just come from mass, and I consulted my guide to see where I should now aim to end up. On the Meseta, there’s a bit less flexibility in terms of where you stop for the day because the towns are more spaced out, so a lot more people end up following the suggested end points. The typical destination for those doing a full day’s walk out of Burgos was Hornillos del Camino, which would be another few hours of walking, so I decided to go for it.

Once I left Rabé de las Calzadas, I really felt a shift. Suddenly, I seemed a world away from everything. There was only one other pilgrim that I could see in either direction, and he remained several hundred yards in front of me for a long time. It would often be the case on the Meseta that I’d be the only pilgrim I could see in either direction – and on the Meseta, you can see for a very long way.

I found myself thinking “if this is the Meseta, I’ll take it!” While you may not find the above landscapes particularly beautiful, I felt a unique sense of peace in being so obviously isolated. I was also very happy because my new shoes felt great on my feet – my toes didn’t feel too restricted!

My only complaint, on this day and the next, was the prevalence of flies on the road. As I neared Hornillos del Camino, I seemed to be walking in a continual cloud of them! Swatting them away with my trekking poles did nothing.

I arrived in Hornillos around 3:00 or so and received a warm welcome from the manager of the albergue. Although my six-person room smelled like it had been doused in cleaning fluid, I liked the place; we were essentially in a family home that happened to use the second floor’s bedrooms for pilgrims. There was a small backyard with lounge chairs (and, still, a lot of flies).

The communal meal that night was homemade paella. I spoke a while with two Swedish women (also sleeping in my room) who were picking up where they’d left off the year before; today was their first day of walking. I also joined the conversation of a group of three French people in their sixties: Jean-Pierre, his wife Dominique, and their friend Marie-Claude. They, like all the other French pilgrims I’d met thus far, were happy to find another francophone and readily included me in their conversation. The three of them had done all of the Camino routes in France and were now tackling the way in Spain. Dominique and Marie-Claude would only go as far as León, but Jean-Pierre planned to go all the way to Santiago. I would interact a lot with all of these people in the coming days, and I eventually started thinking of Jean-Pierre as my “French Camino dad”. (I already had American and Canadian “Camino dads”, and I’d eventually pick up a Spanish “Camino dad” in Galicia.)

Before going to bed, I spent about an hour looking at the pages from my guide book and coming up with a plan for the rest of the journey. Here it is below, showing the town, number of kilometers per day, and the date on which I anticipated arriving. I mostly stuck to this (in a couple of cases later on, I went further than planned).

So, my first day on the Meseta was a success. I missed my “Camino family” but was also looking forward to meeting new people. So far, I hadn’t encountered any of the people I’d seen on the way to Burgos, and it would mostly stay that way.