HikeAcrossSpain

Day 19  Leon to Mazarife Miles today:  14.2 Elevation gain: 444’ Descent:  281’ Total walking miles:  201.9 Total Camino miles:  316.4 A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.  John Barrymore We were back to walking today, and a glorious day it was! Mostly sunny with just a mild breeze and getting warmer every day. (At least for one more day). It was almost hot this afternoon, but still pleasant.  Tonight we are in Mazarife (pop 414), having walked an easy 14.2 miles on mostly leaving level terrain, about half on gravel paths and half on pavement. Tonight we are staying in the Tio Pepe Albergue in en-suite rooms. Very basic but certainly tolerable, except for Chum who cannot deal with slow or non functioning internet connections.  Tomorrow is a big day. We should pass the milestone of 20+ miles in a day. Luckily the weather forecast is good for tomorrow; than, as a local gentleman told us this eveni...

Day 18  Rest Day in Leon I was half way across Spain, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. Unknown Zero Miles Today. Second of three rest days for the entire Camino. Rest days are Logroño, Leon, and Santiago. We are now at approximately the halfway point mile-wise in our great adventure. We are walking all the miles from here onward as our 4 day biking segment is completed. Now on to the Mystery of the Octopus. A few nights ago we all shared a bottle of wine at dinner. Wine is normally included with dinner, but this particular evening we upgraded to a better bottle of Spanish wine. We all enjoyed the wine and thought it particularly good. Blaze had the last glass poured from the bottle. We had just payed for our meals and the wine when Scot noticed something strange in his empty wine glass. Not just some normal sediment, but something more mysterious; something familiar yet peculiar.  We studied it from all angles...

Day 17  Sahagun to Leon Miles today:  35.4 (biking) Elevation gain: 849’ Descent:  866’ Total Bike Miles:  114.5 Total Walking Miles:  187.7 Total Miles:  302.2 Moving speed: 8 mph Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.                Maya Angelo Yesterday was a challenge...today was a hard push and a challenge. We started the last day of biking knowing that we had about 36 miles of mountain bike riding ahead of us. Chum, the ultimate technology geek checked at least 3 different online weather forecasts and announced at breakfast that he was confident that we would had relatively good weather with cloudy skies, no rain, and a breeze late in the day. Wrong!! A few minutes later we finished our most skimpy breakfast of the trip at our worst accommodation of the trip to discover it was already raining. We delayed a few minutes and the rain let up so off we went in full rain gear....

Day 16  Carrion to Sahagun Miles (Biking). 24.1 Elevation gain:  503’ Descent:  477’ Total bikes miles:  79.1 Total walking miles:  187.7 Total miles:  266.8 Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. Explore. Dream. Discover – Mark Twain This was a challenging day. Breakfast was not available until an hour later than usual. We began biking a bit after 9 am under cloudy skies and very cool temperatures. The first part of the day was on a seldom used paved country road. We were making good time, passing a lot of pilgrims, and reuniting with a few from past days. The scenery was non-spectacular, mostly flat with endless acres of young wheat.  Late morning we stopped at a very small town with a nice cafe and enjoyed our coffees. As we did, the dark clouds rolled in. We pushed on trying to out ride the storms. We stopped briefly at a town square bench for a ro...

Day 15   Castrojeriz to Carrion Miles (biking):  29.4 Elevation gain;  972’ Descent:  912’ Total Bike Miles:  55.0 Total Walk Miles:  187.7 Total Miles:  242.7 The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine.            John Howard First a very short synopsis of today’s biking. The weather was cool and cloudy with a good tailwind all day. Lots of gravel and bumpy paths. All of us suffered from sit bone pain today and the rough paths did nothing to relieve that! Less than a mile from Castrojeriz we met the first hill of the day...3/4’s of a mile long. All of our bikes began bucking about 300 yards into the hill and refused to be ridden any further. It was a long walk up the hill pushing our bikes with panniers.  At the crest, the terrain leveled off for about 1/4 mile and then began a very steep and long downhill that the guidebook said was an 18 degree pitch. Fortunately it w...

Day 14  Burgos to Castrojeriz Miles Today:  25.6 (Biking) Total biking miles:   25.6 Elevation gain:  1050’ Descent:   1216’ Miles walking so far: 187.7 Total miles:  213.3 Get a bicycle. You will not regret it...if you live.                  Mark Twain  We shifted gears today and started our first of 4 days of biking. Our adventure started on some rocky footing as the rental bikes were to be delivered to our hotel at 8 am. After a couple of phone calls, they finally arrived about 8:45. Once we got the bikes adjusted and our gear for the day organized we finally hit the Camino about 9:30.  We had concerns about biking in the city of Burgos (pop 180,000) starting in the heart of the downtown during rush hour. Our concerns were unwarranted as the traffic on the streets we travelled was very light and after 2-3 miles we were in the countryside. The lack of traffic here continue...