Atapuerca

Hostal la Plazuela Verde, Atapuerca. 15.50.

After yesterday’s paltry fifteen kilometre walk, today’s 30km+ hike across the Montes de Oca felt like much more of a feat. We’ve landed, at last, in Atapuerca, the last post before Burgos and the end of the line for several peregrinos.

I’ve enjoyed a few later starts over the last few days, so it felt good to get back to another 5am departure under the stars. It was a little chilly this morning, though not as cold as it was the last time I made this trek, when (if my memory serves) I required the use of gloves to stop my hands from shaking in the spring of 2023. The sun rose late, so for at least the first hour of today’s march I was under the aegis of the morning star, Venus, sitting alone in the firmament to the east.

The signs for Santiago are getting shorter. The kilometre count is nearly down to 500, so I’ll be passing the halfway point of the Camino at some stage between Burgos and León. I’m looking forward to the flats of the Meseta, but the mystery of the Camino de San Salvador and the Camino Primitivo are becoming more and more appealing by the day as I hear stories of these less-traveled roads from some of the pilgrims that I meet. It will certainly be a very different Camino to the one I’ve had for the last week or so.

Shortly after leaving Grañón yesterday, we entered the immensity of Castilla y León, Spain’s largest territory. The rivalry between the twin kingdoms remains in the signage, with most of the Camino markers defaced in some way so that the word “León” is crossed or blacked out. The reverse is true once you enter the old Leonese territories around Sahagún, where the graffiti becomes even more markedly separatist in nature. It’s a not so subtle reminder that Spain had always been a conglomerate of different peoples rather than one singular nation, from the Castilians and the Catalans to the Leonese, the Basques, the Galicians, the Andalusians and the Asturians.

How do you even begin to govern such a diverse nation, with such ancient and deeply-rooted territorial disputes?

After a much-needed breakfast stop at Villafranca Montes de Oca, where the bar (El Pájaro) opened just minutes after we arrived, we set off up into the forested hills. The Montes de Oca are the very north-westernmost reach of the larger Sierra de la Demanda. The name comes from an old dispute over land use in the hill country rather than the difficulty of its terrain, but after the relatively flat and easy days from Puente La Reina to Logroño and beyond, it is a demanding task before the endless expanse of the Meseta Central.

The Montes de Oca are a mystical place. Toward the top of the hill, the birdsong seems to die back into silence. Not even the vultures circle here. I’ve encountered this eerie silence before in Sachsenhausen, an olive grove near Víznar (Granada) and a remote village in northern Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army marched in and executed the entire village. It is the silence of the dead.

A small concrete block marks the spot where around three hundred men and women were executed during the Civil War: Republicans, political dissidents, liberal thinkers and just about anyone who disagreed with the vision of the Nationalist state that was to come. They were dragged from their homes during the night to this lonely stretch of forest, summarily shot and thrown into one of a number of mass graves that can be found less than a hundred metres from the Camino itself.

This is the fate that might have befallen my great-grandfather Mateo, had he been any more outspoken in his beliefs than he already was. Instead, he was dismissed from his post and sent away to a village where he would not cause trouble, and only when he went to hospital for a minor operation did they find a way to deal with him quietly, leaving him on the hospital bed to die.

I suspect this, however, is what happened to the rest of his friends: the circle of poets, free-thinkers and philosophers to which he and his wife Mercedes belonged, before Franco and his nationalist forces turned their world upside down.

Many of the trees here are new: plantations of pine trees that were planted after the ancient oaks burned down in a fire some fifty years ago. Somewhere beneath them all are the remains of other victims of the war, concealed by Spain’s painful attempt to forget. The official Pacto del Olvido – the Pact of Forgetting – passed in 1975 after Franco’s death was an attempt to move on from the divisive horrors of the past and forge a new country, but for many, the memory of the silenced dead is still very raw. Even the birds of the forest seem to abide by it, nearly a century later.

A jolly chappie called Ángel had set up shop in the spot where there was a food truck a few years ago, selling fruit juice and watermelon slices, and at 2€ a throw for the latter, it was simply too good to pass up.

We stopped for a snack lunch at San Juan de Ortega (if tostada con tomate can be considered lunch) before pressing on to Atapuerca. Today and tomorrow are going to be the hottest days for a while with an average high of 35°C, so we were keen to reach our destination before the sun got too high in the sky.

I brought the team to a halt at Agés, the village where I stayed the last time I came this way, to drink and re-supply before the final two kilometre push across the shadeless fields of Atapuerca. Being an average of nine years older than the others in my group (ranging from seventeen to twenty-five), I have somewhat fallen into the position of leader, which seems to happen rather easily these days. I guess it’s the teacher in me. I don’t resent it at all. It’s quite nice to be able to look out for them and to serve as their guide, especially since one of them is still at school and doing the Camino as part of an IB project.

There aren’t that many options for eating out in Atapuerca, so we might cook together tonight. That would be nice, as tomorrow will invariably involve a farewell meal out in Burgos, so a communal dinner of own creation would make a welcome change.

My pilgrim passport is looking a lot healthier. One whole side is nearly complete. It’s getting easier to pick up three or more stamps per day (which was near impossible in the first week or so). I may not need my third credencial after all, though I suspect I will still need my second! BB x

In Burgos, the journey comes to an end. One leaves for home, two pack for their flight tomorrow and one more digs in to stay, leaving four of the gang to push on toward Santiago tomorrow. Perhaps mine is the hardest, watching the others move on or away, knowing that if it weren’t for my flight (and my beleaguered feet) I’d have long since decided to chuck in my plans and make for Leon with them. But life is full of farewells, and I could never have gone with them all the way to Santiago in the week of holiday that remains. So here I am, at the end of this run at the Camino, putting my thoughts into words.

Today’s leg was a special one. Impatient after a crush in Bar El Alquimista over breakfast – I’m still not especially good at dealing with loud and crowded spaces – I set out ahead of the others this morning, nursing a doctored but still painful blister and conscious it would likely slow me down. It didn’t feel great leaving the group behind, but the crush in the bar threw me off a bit and I needed some time on my own on the road as a remedy.

Leaving behind the slumbering town of Agés, I followed the road westward toward Atapuerca. This is possibly one of the most mystical waypoints of the Camino de Santiago, but blink and you’ll miss it – because Atapuerca is the resting place of the oldest known hominids in Europe. Not far from where the Camino crosses the Sierra lies the Sima de los Huesos, a pit that contains the bones of ancient humans who have lain there for nearly a million years. Walk this stage of the Camino and you really do get the sense you’re following in the footsteps, not just of a thousand years of Christian pilgrims, but almost a million years of human wayfarers. One of my fellow pilgrims pointed out that there are far older pilgrim routes in India, but if you think of the first humans pushing toward the end of the known world (where Finisterre stands today) as the first Camino pilgrims, I’d like to think the Camino de Santiago is a fair contender for the top spot.

I made the climb alone, taking with me a sprig of mistletoe, a fallen olive branch and a strip of blackthorn blossom: something wicked, something old and something new. It seemed like the right thing to do. Meanwhile the birdsong up the mountain was spellbinding: hoopoes, cuckoos and woodlarks on all sides, and these last especially, becoming for me the quintessential sound of this stretch of the Camino. I’ve recorded a video so I can share some of that magic with you.

From the mystical heights of ancient Atapuerca with its lonely wooden cross and stone circle, you look down from the last high place upon the city of Burgos and the seemingly endless reach of the Meseta beyond, with the daunting white cliffs of the Picos de Europa clearly visible over 130km away.

Having waited for my companions at the cross, I joined them for the descent into Burgos, but when their stop for a mid-morning snack threatened to stretch over an hour, my itchy feet swept me back onto the road again. It would be the last time I spoke English on the Camino this year, because from there on out the only people I encountered were Spaniards on the road (they took long enough to find!).

For the final twelve kilometres into Burgos I was joined on the road by Fran, a programmer from Soria in his twenties who was an enlightening companion. From him I learned that the Spaniards, as I suspected, had indeed done the Camino for Semana Santa, but they had started at the beginning of the national holiday and were thus a few days ahead. I also learned about his home town of Soria and how the Mesta have monetised their trade, turning what was once an affordable experience following the shepherds’ route into a glamorous eco-tourism experience to the tune of 200-300€. He also gave his thoughts on the Catalan question, likening it to a dog barking furiously at a door which, when it is finally opened, suddenly goes quiet – it is easier to hate when you cannot see what it is that troubles you. Or something like that. I was just happy to be speaking Spanish – and flattered to be told that if I hadn’t revealed I was English in the first five minutes I’d have had him stumped, as he was genuinely ‘confundido’ by my Spanish.

I took my leave of Fran outside Burgos’ enormous cathedral, after a brief conversation with a local (‘De dónde sois?’ : ‘Yo de Soria,’ / ‘Y yo de Inglaterra, pero con familia en La Mancha.’ / ‘Soria e Inglaterra? Menuda familia los dos.’). Fran took off to catch his BlaBlaCar home and I set out in search of my hostel.

I didn’t get much of a siesta, because the next guest to arrive was another Francisco, this time from Puebla, México. After a brief exchange over the subtle numbering of the hostel beds we ended up talking for close on two hours about a number of topics, with him asking after my thoughts on Italy, Spain and the British Empire and me asking for his wisdom on La Malinche and nahuatl. He is on a quest much like I was years ago: on his tour of Europe he has come to far-flung Burgos to seek out the village of Grijalba, from which he believes his father’s ancestors may have hailed (through the legendary explorer Juan de Grijalva).

It is always heartwarming to meet another traveler on the road, but especially so when they are on a quest – you don’t meet many of that kind these days. Perhaps it is fate that the day started in Bar El Alquimista, named for Paolo Coelho’s famous novella.

After one more conversation in Spanish which left me feeling more confident than ever before, I led the pilgrims of our group that remained down a side street in search of dinner. It couldn’t have been a better choice: six raciones and a salad split between us made a feast such as we hadn’t had yet. Morcilla, croquetas, calamares and sepia a la plancha, torreznos and zamburiñas (what more fitting food for pilgrims than scallops?)… it was far and away the best I’ve eaten on the trail.

And I didn’t have to pay a cent, since the generous Dane in our number footed the bill before we twigged what he was up to. I’d done something similar a few days prior, so I guess he was paying me back, but that kind of generosity is what makes the Camino so special. For our last meal as a group, I could not have asked for more.

I’ve never bonded with other peregrinos quite so quickly, and I wish I could take the road with them to the end. But every road leads to a parting, and we part as friends.

It is not the end of the road for me, but rather a parenthesis. One day I will come back here, to the ancient city of Burgos, and pick up the Camino where I left it. Hopefully I’ll meet other pilgrims like them who will make the road an adventure with friends once again. Sophia’s charm and maturity. Mikkel’s wit and his generosity. Katie’s wisdom and Lachlan’s humour, courage and peace of mind.

Domenico the Carabiniere. Enrique the Arriero. Phil the Professor. I have met so many characters on the Camino this time. That has been the real blessing of the road this Easter. I’m glad I came. Truly. (And especially since it was a whim decision just over a couple of weeks ago).

It’s now half past eight in the morning. By now they will have left Burgos and will be somewhere on the road to their next destination. All I can do now is wish the four of them all the best on their road to Santiago. And someday, sooner or later, I will take up my shell once more and follow them. BB x