Day 12

We left Burgos about 8:30 and it took almost 90 minutes to get out of the urban agglomeration. But along the way we passed a bread shop and a fruit store and wound up carrying a fresh baguette and a bag of cherries. It is the season for cherries to be ripe and we have enjoyed seeing them on the trees and in shops. We've eaten a few but we've been careful to remember the words of one of our MK nephews from Portugal about the danger of eating too many!

Finally got to the park at the edge of town and if you saw the movie The Way you may remember the scene where the Gypsy father makes his son carry Tom's bag to the city gate. It was his penance for having attempted to steal the bag. We didn't see any Gypsies there, but we met a delightful old man who was "walking" his dog, if you can call it that. The little bulldog could only go so far before having to stop and gasp for breath.  We enjoyed talking with him and learned about bulldog's lungs and the old man's knee surgery, for which he was about to have an Xray.

He and Sharon even had to pose for a photo, which I snapped with my other camera but managed to take a picture of the screen to be able to post it here:

At long last we were out of town and walking what has been referred to as the "sublime meseta". You can Google it if you want, but not so sure that sublime is the best word! We walked through a couple of small cities, then had to take a detour because of road work and finally arrived after 7.8 miles in the little town of Tarjados. I had reserved us a room at a place called La Fabrica, which was a converted flour mill. Pictures in the lobby showed it as nothing but the shell of an old building, without even a roof overhead. It had been very nicely restored and we were delighted with our accommodations! The piece de la resistance was the shower--it was a modern jetted shower, complete with music, overhead and wand showers and six jets on the side. Rather fancy for us!

We also discovered the longest 300 meters in Spain. After walking all morning, we finally came to the sign for our hotel and it advised us that it was 300 meters. There's just something about seeing the place but still having to walk the rest of the way that gets to you!

Went down for dinner and the World Cup was showing the game between Uruguay and Italy, and it seemed as if the whole village had crowded in to watch the game. Luckily there were only five minutes left, and we watched for a while as one team tried without success to score, and then the other tried for a while without success to score. How exciting.

We met Jonathan from Scotland and his nephew and a friend who had come to this region just to spend a week walking in the meseta. Very much enjoyed visiting with them.

The view out our window was gorgeous, but we had been very fortunate to get in before the rains started. We were, after all, on the plains of Spain. You know what they say!

I wrote the nicest blog yesterday, but made the mistake of closing the app before hitting the save button. Guess what happens? Won't make that mistake again, as it is hard to remember all the details from the previous day. So now I'm caught up on the blog and ready to start on today's adventure. Next step: HIT THE SAVE BUTTON!