Thursday 14 January 2016

Thursday 14 January

Burgos was chosen for today’s destination, purely because it was directly on our route and had an open-all-year ACSI campsite. We’d decided that a bit of electricity would be beneficial to charge a few batteries (too many electronic toys, that’s our problem!). Mick reckoned that a proper shower wouldn’t go amiss either.

Getting a ‘as soon as it’s daylight’ start (i.e. nearly 9am), the three hours of driving, broken up with a coffee break and a number of stops at fuel stations (we were on a LPG mission and had a couple of false starts due to me seeing a cheap price on the board, making a split-second decision that it must be LPG, only to then find that it was biodiesel at a silly-cheap price*), was unremarkable except for this bit, through an impressively rocky area:

Arriving at the campsite, we’d no sooner got ourselves settled than a convoy of seven British vans rolled in (turns out that they’re on their way down to Tenerife for 2.5 months). By the time it got dark there must have been 30-odd motorhomes and caravans here, the overwhelming majority of which are displaying British registrations. My theory is that a ferry from the UK came into Santander this morning, and this is an obvious stopping point when heading south – but maybe it’s this busy with Brits every day.

With the campsite being just a couple of miles upriver from the city of Burgos, and with a path leading the whole way there, after a quick lunch off we set to see the cathedral, which our guidebook says is ‘one of the most extraordinary achievements of Gothic art’.

Into the city, we passed down an avenue of conjoined trees (branches of each one have been historically spliced with its neighbours):


Through a city gate (where I did read the information sign, but all pertinent facts have now fallen out of my head):

And onwards to the cathedral, which was indeed such an impressive building that we decided to part with some pennies (€14 worth of them, in fact) to see inside.


The audio tour is comprehensive and lasts over an hour and a half, taking you around the most ridiculous levels of religious opulence which this building houses. It really is an incredible place, and well worth the entrance fee. The only downside of the tour was that I got so cold with all the standing around that by the time we emerged (into the balmy 6 degrees outside) I was so cold that I’d lost all feeling in my fingers.

It wasn’t the cold that prevented us from exploring more of the city (which was apparently a candidate for European City of Culture for 2016; a quick Google tells me that it was San Sebastian which was selected), but the short amount of day remaining. So, back upriver we walked, at a very fast pace which failed to get the blood back into my fingers; they were still numb when we arrived back, although hugging a cup of tea soon did the trick.

(*We paid 94.5c/litre for diesel, which equates to 70p/litre at the current exchange rate. Later we saw it for 86.9c/litre. The LPG set us back 59.5c/litre and no doubt we paid for the quantity which sprayed back over my hands as I decoupled the nozzle. It’s why Mick insists it’s my job to fill the LPG.)

2 comments:

  1. Gosh, that surpasses Knipe towers, ( do not tell Mike that though?) It certainly sounds as if you are both having fun. Currently we are experiencing sub zero temperatures and snow.

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  2. We've not been exempt from subzero temperatures (-5 last night!) but hopefully we'll make it far enough southeast today to find some nice warm winter sun.

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