July 10: San Juan de Ortega to Burgos

I´m batting 1000. Every day I think is going to be easier turns out to be one of the toughest ones. Today was no exeption. We went a little further than necessary yesterday, leaving us only about 24.5 k today, with one uphill early in the morning then an easy descent over 20 k into Burgos.

The morning was lovely, actually. We got out at about 6:00 again, with the intention of stopping about 2.5 k out for a light breakfast. It was cool, and rural, and scenic, and just beautiful for walking. After about 6 k we hit the uphill, which was a pretty good workout but still cool enough not to be a killer. Hit the top and began our descent, with four towns to go through before we hit Burgos. Easy!

Except for the fact that the last 10-14 k were all along a highway, walking on the shoulder on asphalt until we hit the outskirts of Burgos, which was nothing but industrial corridor for several more k, then city with sidewalk walking almost all the way through. Cement, cement, asphalt, concrete, asphalt...I now, after two weeks of walking, have shinsplints in my left leg that balance the pain from the neuroma in my right foot quite nicely. Aargh.

Actually, I´ve been pretty pleased that the pain in my right foot hasn´t gotten any worse, and is pretty managable. When it gets too bad, I just have to rest my foot for a bit and it gets much better. But these shinsplints have just been feeling worse all day, even though I´ve been icing and taking anti-inflammatories and resting all afternoon I really hope this doesn´t continue, but if it does I´ll just have to decide to take a bus for a day. The thing I really didn´t want to do...but it may be one of those things I have to be willing to lay down. We´ll just have to wait and see.

Niles and Emlyn are still doing pretty well, with blisters becoming more managable and no real new injuries, as far as I can tell. Emlyn did learn that going out alone to see the beautiful cathedral in Burgos isn´t the best idea if you don´t want to be accosted; she back-elbowed a guy and glared at him until he backed away, and later discovered that another peregrina had also been grabbed by the same guy. Sigh. Not fun, but she held her own. She says if she´d known he was following peregrinas around like that she would have hit him again.

One of my fellow travelers shared his ibuprofin ointment with me this afternoon; it´s always interesting to see how we figure all this stuff out when we don´t speak the same language. Actually, I´ve found that it is often very, very difficult to keep straight which language I´m using. It´s not infrequent that I find Spanish and German mixing with a "oui" in the same sentance. "Ouijasi" is becoming part of my standard vocabulary. But it doesn´t actually seem that awkward; everyone just naturally seems to start using a variety of languages to see which one is going to work best, and it´s quite fun and wonderful to listen to. And again, considering the difficulty with languages, it´s amazing to see relationships developing across the language barriers.

Burgos is a large city, and very different from what we have encountered before. So far my favorite part has been running across a poster for Mark Knopfler, appearing here in concert in a few weeks. I´m looking forward to seeing a bit more of it this evening when a group of us are going out for tapas. But I think I´ll be glad to leave tomorrow before the World Cup, and see if we can find a way to watch it in a smaller town.

I´ve talked with Marty every day, and probably run up a huge phone bill, but am really looking forward to seeing him in 5 days! He´s getting final prep done, and we should be able to meet up without too much difficulty in Sahagun, then have a 10k walk to our algergue. We´re still trying to figure out the best way to get from Santiago de Compostela back to our return flight from Paris, and really wish we could just go to Madrid and pick up our connecting flight there. But they don´t usually let you do that, so it´ll probably be a 14-20 hour train trip from Spain to Paris, so we can get a connecting flight back to Spain. Airlines.

I´m making no guesses at all about tomorrow, even though it´s only a 20 k day, which is estimated to take about 5 hours. We´ll see what my left shin has in store for me. But on the other hand, there´s nothing here that isn´t managable, and I have to remember how many prayers and blessings are being laid out for us.

Buen Camino!