Day 18. Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Burgos. 46 miles

Day 18. Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Burgos. 46 miles.

Although the Parador hotel in Santo Domingo was lovely, I didn't get much sleep. Partly I'd had a coffee after my evening meal at a small cafe that did a €10 menu, and partly because of the clock tower in the cathedral square just outside our window which struck the quarters as well as the hours.

The breakfast was a huge buffet including cold meats and fish, salami, bacon, eggs, fish,  2 kinds of tortilla, fruit, breads, pastries, yogurt, cereals, etc. A great foundation for a day on the bike.

It was cooler today, and ideal cycling conditions. My route, following German guide book veered off the main road and was mostly flat and straight and took me past a village where they specialise on growing pimentos, and pasta huge sodium sulphate mine. I think that is gypsum.

We met at Belorado where my loop road joined back into the main N-120. Despite being a road that is in process of conversion to a motorway, the traffic level was similar to a Country B road in the UK, a gradual climb as far as the village of Villafranca-Montes de Oca. Turning a corner I was faced with a sign saying gradient 16% for 3 km. similar to the Pyrenees but shorter. The summit was at Puerto de la Pedraja at 1150 metres, so a bit higher than Scafell  Pike. But remember the area round here is mainly at about 800-900 metres, so 1150 isn't that enormous. Brendan had found a delightful picnic spot just past the summit, opposite a ruined chapel, and next to an ancient well with water spouting from a carved sheep's head.The picnickers seats were built from old stone kilometre posts, I read somewhere.

The rest of the route to Burgos was gently downhill and I managed probably 30 mph most of the way. Great campsite. But then the ideal day disintegrated. I could not find my Pilgrim a Record. That's the wee booklet which I got from the Confraternity of Saint James to record my journey by having motels, churches, campsites, ECG, stamp it. A phone call to the hotel revealed that I'd left it in our room. So back to Santo Domingo in the car to pick it up. I was very relieved the book had turned up. I was also relieved to know that the section of the main road I'd bypassed had quite a few hills on it, so probably I'd made the right decision.

Day 17. Iratxe to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. 65miles

A day of surprises and changed plans - which is putting a brave face on it.

I set off well before 8 to get the best of the cool part of the day. We planned to meet up in Logrono for my first lunch, but Brendan found the Logrono signage tricky, and we decided to meet in the next town, Navarrete. The route recommended by my guide book Jakobs-Radweg : von
den Pyrenaen nach Santiago de Compostela (yes, it's in German, and, no, I don't know much German, but it's the best I could find at Stanford's) took me along the banks of the River Ebro, with a stiff climb at one point and then couple of miles on a gravel track. A bit slower than ideal.

Over my second lunch at Navarrete, we agreed to press on to Najera, a small town with a campsite. In  fact it was a beautiful place, if you ignore the outer suburbs. But the campsite is no longer in business. By now it was getting hot,  but maybe not so hot as yesterday, so we decided to press on to Santo Domingo. The motorway runs out just beyond Najera, and I took the main road which climbed very gradually over a low range of hills. Traffic wasn't that heavy, there were long gaps between lorries and cars, so I wonder why they are bothering to build a motorway. Each tiny village seems to have its own motorway junction, and the village of Hormilla (maybe 1000 inhabitants) has sprouted three giant roundabouts.

Reached the campsite OK. But then the plan went agley. The campsite consisted mostly of holiday chalets. At the far end was a camping filed beautifully laid out, with young trees marking out the plot boundaries. The servicios were beautiful and new. But they'd forgotten perhaps the most important thing - ground you can actually get tent pegs into. I chatted to a Dutch couple who were doing the El Cid trail by bicycle. They'd managed to get their small tent up, but had a different type of peg from us. The man from the campsite tried to help,  but really just succeeded in bending our pegs even more. Do not go to www.campingbabares.es if you have a tent.

So we packed the tent up again and headed into town to find a hotel. The centre of Santa Domingo is all small streets, semi pedestrianised, old stone houses. We're in luxury at the Parador hotel opposite the Cathedral. The room has a balcony opening over the front of the Hotel overlooking the cathedral square.

But on the plus side, I covered 65 miles which isn't bad considering the weather.