We left our spot by the river fairly early after a reasonable night’s sleep – apart from the times we were kept awake by barking dogs!!
Our plan was to go to Burgos, which was about a half an hour drive away. Despite having lived just off the Burgos Road north of Madrid, we had never got around to visiting the city. Shortly after we left our campsite, we saw a lovely statue of El Cid by the roadside. We then passed through a small village called Mecerreyes which, despite only having about 300 inhabitants, had a sculpture trail with 14 sculptures. We spotted one as we drove past. Most of these sculptures portrayed countryside jobs.
When we got to Burgos at 9.30, it was already really hard to find anywhere to park. We eventually found somewhere and because we didn’t have the right coins, needed to load the parking app elparking.
The good thing about this app was that, unlike many places in England, where you cannot return to the same place on the same day, with this app, you were able to add further time, despite the fact that the published limit on our car park was two hours. This was quite handy to know for future trips.
We headed straight for the cathedral, hoping to find a good place for breakfast on the way. There was a nice bar right near the cathedral where we had a breakfast of toast with olive oil and tomato, which was delicious. The sparrows were extremely friendly!
There were loads of statues everywhere, both old and new. We learnt a new word as a Spanish lady told us to take a picture from the front of the father and son statue so that we could see the ‘pito’ (Spanish slang for penis!) She was obviously quite keen to see if we understood as she waited until we’d walked to the other end and taken another picture. 🤣
We then went to the cathedral, and Dave was very envious to see that I had 5G on my phone, which quite unusually is newer than his at the moment. Anyway, it didn’t seem much quicker than the 4G. 🤣
The cathedral tour came with an app, so we could either read the information about each element or listen to it. The app was very well designed and easy to follow. I have just chosen a few highlights of the visit, which was really impressive, as there was way too much of interest to fit into a short blog post. The tomb of El Cid and his wife took pride of place and is pictured below.
On the walk on the way back from the cathedral, there was a very nice National Geographic photo exhibition ‘Colours of the world’ on display on the main walkway through the park.
After that we headed up to the castle in the car and were able to have a look around the ruins in the company of several school groups. There were lots of cute Spanish children dressed as knights & princesses learning about the history and a real buzz of noisy chatter!!
We managed to find a Carrefour hypermarket so Dave got a new memory stick and we did a decent amount of food shopping in preparation for the next few days. We then headed to our campsite Camping Puerta de La Demanda to the east of Burgos.
We really liked this campsite. There was a very friendly welcome and we were given a lot of hints about places to visit in the region. There were nice, large pitches, a really clean and spacious toilet block and a good laundry area undercover. They even had a special machine, where for €2 you could place your toilet and it would clean it for you and refill it with the necessary chemicals for your onward journey. They also had some mobile homes and some very cute little eco-pods, along with table tennis and a playhouse for the children.
We went for a short walk up to the nearby reservoir and then settled in for the evening to a nice home-cooked meal of fresh tuna and salad washed down with San Miguel.
Word of the day:
Pito = willy (slang) 🤣
Rember the el cid statue in the back ground are the big windows, saleros ? Did you notice an Avenue of trees near there where they were all grafted to grow in an unbroken line.
I think so, when we walked from that statue along the river there were those very “manicured” trees. I don’t remember if they were all joined up though.