the Scots and the Meseta

Well what a week it´s been over here! Since my last post i have covered a couple of hundred km and have walked through a mixture of different landscapes (if that makes sense?). I left the church on the Sunday and headed to Belorado, a little town near Burgos, and decided I ddin´t really fancy wasting a day walking through the industrial mess and suburbs of Burgos so hitched a ride into town with 2 scottish ladies, Agnes and Anne Marie.

Burgos wasn´t what I expected it to be really. It had no atmosphere to it, and although I had originally planned a rest day there I decided to move on the following morning. I bumped into Linda from Miami who had met a week before, and we spent the rest of the week together making each other laugh and trying to keep one another sane on the heat of the afternoons!

The Meseta was the next part of the camino which was to last over a week. It´s a tough part of the walk as it is very monotonous and can send you crazy as you stare at the same fields for the whole day! It straddles the area known as Castilla-Leon,and is huge. I stayed in some great little villages alobg the way, my favourite being the "oasis" in Boadilla. It had a swimming pool, bar, ice cream stand, restaurant and internet too! An Argentinian family ran the hostel so there was a warm, welcoming and caring atmosphere as well as great food!

The funniest day came when we were heading to the same oasis as we passed through a small area of parkland. I noticed on the ground a dead bird, and what I thought was another dead chick. However on closer inspection the wee chick blinked at me and stared for a while. Linda said for me to squeeze my water bladder over it so it could have some water. As I did so the chick opened its beak and gulped down the liquid! Over a period of a few minutes it began to flap its wings and jump around, it was coming back to life! Very carefully we scooped it up and placed it in the trunk of a tree from where its nest had fallen. Just then an old guy approached us asking if we wanted some sweets. As my Mum told me when I was young, "you should never accept sweets from strangers!" However on this occasion he was also offering a stamp for my pilgrim´s passport, and so I accepted.

As I sucked on a refreshing peardrop I told Pepe about the poor chick, and with a wave of his arms he ran to the tree and grabbed it by the neck screaming "siete colores, siete colores!" (seven colours). Apparently it is a beautiful bird that sings far and wide and is prone to attacks from cats. It was a prime target in the area where we had found her and wouldn´t have lasted much longer (especially if a tired pilgrim had trodden on her on their way past by the bar!) He said he would tend to the female (a bird expert it seemed) and would e-mail me photos of her progress. We called her Ave Maria.

Little did we know that the next day we would be passing through a town that St Francis of Assisi visited many hundreds of years ago. I have therefore earned the reputation of being a modern day St Francis!