Day 11 - Belorado to San Juan de Ortega

Our Camino today takes out of Belorado onto San Juan de Ortega, approx 25km. Although our hostel was very nice, the town lacked any nice restaurants and we ended up with spaghetti and Hake for €10.

The terrain today is very varied, along dirt tracks and up through Villambistia for our first pit stop.

Then onto Villafranca de Montes de Oca. The historic routes of this town have welcomed pilgrims since the 9th century.

The village is located at the foot of the Montes de Oca, formally a wild unpopulated area renown for bandits that roamed its slopes preying on Pilgrims.

We start our climb up through Oak and very dense Pine forests.
Surprisingly the Camino is busy today; at anyone time we could see at least 30 other pilgrims either in front or behind. Many are people we have met each day. As we all walk at approx the same speed we tend to travel as a long straggling flock, only meeting new people as we catch the slower pilgrims that left St Jean the day before us.

We again met several people on their return pilgrimage, one Dutch man had started in Holland on his bicycle, and when he gets to Santiago will have completed 2600km.

We reach our summit but no views due to the dense pine forest - just a few wind turbines.

We descend into San Juan de Ortega, both of us very tired and nursing what seems to be shin splints. Strange that we both got the same complaint at the same time. It's straight to the hostel for some ice.

As you can see, the rain clouds have finally passed and the sun is breaking through, it will hopefully be nice to walk in shorts and feel the sun on our white legs.

We have now got into a good routine of getting to our hostel, washing our day's clothes and relaxing on our own for a few hours.

One of the few churches and monasteries that we were allowed to photograph in.

Here, in this wild and isolated place fraught with danger and difficulty for the medieval pilgrims, is the Augustinian monastery founded by San Juan, a disciple of Santo Domingo in 1150. A remarkable building for such an isolated place.

Our hostel is new, clean and tidy on the outskirts of town and has its own restaurant.

Tomorrow we head for Burgos, a large Cathedral City, a hike of 26km.