I’m back! The cloud kingdom of the Basques is as impressive as ever, and since the earliest bus I could catch was the three-hour pueblo bus, I’m being treated to a great deal more of it than I ever imagined. It’s been a good three months since I was last here, but it looks and feels as though it were just the other day – like the Camino has just been waiting for me to return all this time. It’s a passing fancy, nothing more, but if I were to say I didn’t feel this country calling to me, I’d be lying.
It was a fairly busy flight out here, but if I thought I might encounter a handful of fellow pilgrims, I had another thing coming. From snatches of conversation (and a distinct lack of pilgrim paraphernalia) I’ve learned of the Bilbao BBK music festival that kicks off tomorrow. Apparently it’s one of Europe’s most popular? Shows how much I know!
Leaving a trio of Australian festival-goers and their awful mullets and porno moustaches behind (some girls on dating sites go mad for them, apparently, though God knows why), I bought myself an onward ticket to Burgos through the ALSA machine as there was nobody manning the three booths (“ni un Cristo en la taquilla”, in the words of the lady behind me). Two teenage girls in denim shorts propped their phone up against a pillar and did a TikTok dance, watched cautiously by a sub-Saharan umbrella salesmen on his way up the stairs. I treated myself to my first tortilla y tomate sandwich of the trip and made my way into the maw of the terminus in search of Lane 22.
Whoever designed the seating plan on this bus is even worse at maths than I am. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it whatsoever. Seats 39-40 are followed by 45-46. The opposite seats are in the twenties. Four rows back, the sticker for seats 43-44 has been ripped off, but since they’re the only unnumbered seats on the bus, I can only assume I’m in one of the right seats. If this were a German bus, somebody would be having a fit (I’ve had altercations on German buses before over incorrect seat numbering). Fortunately, this is Spain, and nobody seems to care overmuch.
The bus is winding its way through the northern marches of Spain’s largest county, Castilla y León. A meandering river follows the road, and sleepy establishments dot the landscape: a host of cattle farms, ruined quarries, an ancient church or two, and an out-of-town brothel called ‘Las Vegas’ bearing a crude illustration of fishnet tights on the wall. For the last half hour we’ve been traveling in the shadow of the high cliffs of Lerdano, and beyond that… beyond that is the legendary Meseta. I’ve heard so much about it, I can hardly wait!
I’ve been trying to navigate the telescreen on the back of the seat in front of me. That nobody else except the noisy Moroccan family in front of me is doing the same should have been a clue. The tech is dated and hard to use. I was able to spin fifteen minutes of YouTube out of it after a few failed sign-in attempts (as it won’t let you scroll down to accept cookies), which meant I could enjoy the awesome soundtrack to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for a bit. It’s been a bloody good palliative for a breakup, and while it’s unlikely to knock Ocarina of Time from the top spot (so much love for that classic) it’s easily become my second favourite game in the Zelda series. Plus the layering in the soundtrack is so bloody clever. I’m hooked.
At Balmaseda, near the end of the Lerdano massif, I see my first vulture soaring overhead. It takes me a couple of seconds to see the rest of them: perhaps forty in all, racing toward a destination unseen behind me. I’m almost tempted to jump out the bus to investigate, if it weren’t for the very real possibility of ending up stuck in this backwater until the next pueblo bus, which could be a full twenty-four hours away. It’s a good thing I didn’t bring my camera, though, or I might just have chanced it.
The Moroccan family in the seats in front are making quite a scene. Or rather, their progeny are. The father appears to have given up on parenting his two year old, who has been screaming at the telescreen for the entire journey in a mixture of Spanish, Arabic and that nonsense parrot-speak that babies use. Dad is feigning sleep when he can. Half the remaining passengers appear to have found earplugs and put them to good use. Mine, unfortunately, are in the hold with my rucksack, so this is just something I’ve got to grin and bear. To add to the din, the veiled mother practically shouts down the phone to three friends in quick succession in a voice lucid enough for me to pick up what she’s on about, even with my rusty (and admittedly elementary) Arabic. Fourth time not so lucky: after a break she hears her phone ringing, picks it up, sees who is calling and promptly puts it back down. Seconds pass and it rings again. She lets it ring. Her husband casts a questioning side-eye her way, but their exchange is lost as the bus grinds around a corner. On the fourth attempt she rejects the call outright. The kid continues to wail at the telescreen, unable to understand the interface (which is all in English) or comprehend why hammering his tiny fists on the touchscreen keeps removing the game his father has long since given up reloading for him. So much for catching some Z’s on this bus.
We’ve stopped at a concrete-and-glass café near Villarcayo. It must be a nexus of some kind, because half the bus got off, to be replaced by just a handful of handsome locals. Not fifteen minutes later, we crossed the Ebro river, flanked on both sides by an even more handsome Sierra, its jaw-like granite crags sundered by the mighty river. There are few things more likely to make my jaw drop than a decent granite cliff. Maybe I’m just easily pleased, or maybe my heart is made of granite.
It doesn’t say in the Bible when God made Spain, but I figure it was somewhere towards the end of the week, because wherever I look I see such incomparable beauty. Which makes me just one more hopeless Romantic adventurer to this country before me. There’s quite the list…
Bloody hell, but it’s good to be traveling solo again. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is definitely santo de mi devoción. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m addicted to the unfettered freedom of it. I’m booked ahead for the night due to my late arrival in Burgos, but beyond that, the future is an open book. And that’s just the way I like it.
Roll on three weeks of uncertainty! At the very least, it makes for fantastic writing material. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 