Walking the Camino de Santiago
The Meseta is a big, mostly flat plateau in the center of Spain. I mean, just take a look at that horizon: flat, flat, flat. However, over the eons, rivers have cut deep valleys in the plateau. Naturally, many towns are built in these river valleys. So while crossing the Meseta is mostly an easy trek, climbing down into the […]
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It’s difficult to get lost on the Camino. Not impossible, of course, particularly if there’s a temporary detour in place or an alternate route. Every so often there’s a sign or the ubiquitous yellow arrow. Since the signs are all maintained by local authorities, what they look like varies from place to place. And then sometimes, you get something like […]
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The land after Burgos begins to flatten out, and by the time you leave the village of Rabé de las Calzadas, you’re deep into farm country. There’s still some terrain, as you can see: low, flat hills and undulating fields. In a couple of days, even this will be gone. This is the great plateau of northern and central Spain […]
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As we leave the village of Rabé de las Calzadas, we pass a little chapel that turns out to actually be a hermitage as well, the Nuestra Señora del Monasterio. These little buildings dot the Camino from one end to the other, an almost daily reminder of Spain’s great Christian heritage. Date: 13 April 2016 Place: Rabé de las Calzadas […]
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About 2.5km past the little town of Tardajos, we come to the little town of Rabé de las Calzadas. It’s tiny – less than 250 inhabitants – but I took quite a number of photos here for some reason. It seems like the typical, almost stereotypical, village on the Camino in Castilla. For that reason, I kind of love that […]
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It’s no secret that I like photographing liminal spaces. I was struck by these three doors in the town of Tardajos, at least partially because of the contrast of three different styles of architecture. First, we have Romanesque, then a primitive Gothic, and finally what I will cheekily call Modern. I think of these three, I most prefer the Romanesque. […]
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After a relatively flat 8.5km, we arrive in Tardajos for second breakfast. Like many towns on this part of the Camino, Tardajos sprawls across the meseta on either side of the highway, and you would be forgiven for thinking it grew up around a particularly well-placed truck stop. You’d be wrong, of course. The town of Tardajos received its first […]
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This is one of those “under the highway” moments I mentioned yesterday. There are a number of places on the Camino where the highway is high above the ground for no good geographic reason, and this is one of them. It’s kind of genius, actually, as the land below remains relatively undisturbed. The stream in the background is the same […]
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The Camino eventually exhausts the urban jungle and ducks in and out and under highways for a bit, passing near the odd quasi-suburban housing development. Occasionally, you get a lovely view, such as this footbridge over the stream. Date: 13 April 2016 Place: Burgos (Castilla y León, Spain)
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We continued our urban slog out of Burgos. I often say that a kilometer on concrete is worth two kilometers walking anything else. As we got farther and farther from the old medieval center, Burgos became more and more modern. I cordially dislike modern architecture, but at least this building was an interesting colour. We managed to get our breakfast […]
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