Day 11 – Belorado to Atapueca        (Friday 17th May)

It’ll be of no surprise that we did not walk the 25 km from Belorado to Atapuerca. Mainly due to trying to let my feet recover from the blisters, but also as there was no accommodation available at the next obvious staging post, San Juan de Ortega.


 We resorted to getting the bus from Belorado to Zalduendo. That still necessitated 7 kilometres of walking; so it wasn’t a totally restful day for us. We met a nice Guatemalan bloke waiting for the bus – he too was suffering from blisters, that had caused him to walk a bit lopsided with a resultant knee problem. He told us of his horrific first day walking over the mountains from France to Roncesvalles in Spain – it rained all day, and was misty so he couldn’t enjoy the magnificent views. He’d also encountered a few people who’d hit various issues, medical and not, on that leg. One poor bloke’s backpack had been blown by the strong wind down a really steep slope – which took him an hour to recover! So we have to be thankful for the minor issues we’ve encountered so far.




We’ve spent most of our day here in Atapuerca, which is the proverbial one horse town. Proper rural Spain. But the peeps are friendly, and I’m getting to rest my feet a bit. Travelling through such rural areas does play tricks with your radar – it feels like we’re in the absolute middle of nowhere, but in reality we’re only about 12 miles from Burgos, a significant city of over 100,000 inhabitants.


I know you’d all love to see updated pictures of blisters, but there have been complaints from one or two of our more squeamish readers; so for now you’ve spared!

Manana – vamos para Burgos (probably terrible Spanish – I’ll await the feedback)

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