Day 28 - 33 Kilometres

Belorado to San Juan de Ortega-Ages-Atapuerca-Olmos de Atapuerca...

We were supposed to walk only 23 kilometres, but we arrived in San Juan around noon, and as it was still early in the day, and there were no shops near the Albergue to pick up dinner, we decided to move on to the next town. Ages, 2 Kilometres farther on had space in their albergue, but it was a little pricy, and we are pobre perigrinos (poor pilgrims). So we went on to Atapuerca. The Albergues in Atapuerca were full. We were indeed beginning to feel like pobre perigrinos!

Sidenote - Atapuerca is the site of the oldest human inhabitation in Europe. There is an ongoing archeolocical excavation that is turning up evidence of human activity from 1,000,000,000 years ago. In front of one of the albergues there was even a wheelbarrow, shovel, and what looked like people bits (a rib, a few pieces of femur, maybe a bit of hip). That was all very interesting, but still no room at the inn.

So we went on to Olmos de Atapuerca, a 2.5 Km detour off the Camino. They had an Albergue. It cost the same as the one in Ages. We decided to stay anyway. 33 Km is enough for one day!

We still needed food for dinner, and the nearest shop was back in Altapuerca. Since none of us was too keen on walking, we all took turns borrowing the bike of a friendly Spanish guy doing the Camino by bicycle. We had run into the Irish boys again at the last Albergue, and had spent the afternoon walking with them. Luckily they are tall, since the bike´s seat came nearly up to my chest. We nomitated one to be our grocery shopper and away he went.

For such a small town, they had a pretty well-stocked grocery...Including winner of the best cheese in the world award 2006! Naturally we had some for dinner.

We hope to be rewarded for our extra kilometres of walking today by a shortened day tomorrow. San Juan-Burgos is scheduled at 26.5km. With what we´ve cut, even going off the trail, it should only be 16km.