BURGOS TO SAHAGUN – half way to Compostella 😃🚴😃🚴
Not much phone signal on this stretch, so the last 5 days of cycling are recorded together.
From Burgos there’s a steep incline on the Camino which takes you to the meseta – literally ‘big table’. It’s a plateau which is cultivated with cereal crops and sunflowers – the breadbasket of northern Spain – and stretches from Burgos in the east to beyond Leon in the west.
The dominant colour of the scenery was beige as we cycled in October, but not a boring beige, there is texture in the surroundings, course stalks of cut sunflowers, prickly stubble of the harvested cereal crops, soft velvety grasses, and very occasionally a colourful autumnal tree.
The Camino passes through beige villages which all have four things – a church, a bar, a water fountain and a playground, but not much else. Again, the dominant colour of the buildings is beige, some of the rendering is mud and straw.
The villages of the meseta are completely dependent on the Camino, without peregrino income most would no longer exist.
We met and chatted to quite a few peregrinos as we cycled, the South Koreans are by far the happiest and friendliest.
The meseta is a long beige stretch lasting more than 100 miles between Burgos and Leon, the boredom is evident on most of the walkers’ faces, and their posture speaks volumes too. The fields of bent over sunflowers provide good imagery of how the walking pilgrims look.
