We spent a couple nights in Burgos, right at the foot of the cathedral, and never quite escaped its view. The old quarter of Burgos is lovely, and crowded with people, bars, restaurants and stores, deservedly so.
In addition to wandering the streets and drinking in the plazas, we needed to go to the train station to modify our train ticket from Segovia to Madrid and also wanted to see the museum of human evolution, recommended by Chris’ Aunt Barbara whom we will see in a couple weeks.
We had bought train tickets from Segovia to Madrid online, but never got an option to add bikes. So Chris called her Auntie Barbara who has lived in Spain for 40 years and she called Renfe and was told that it’s impossible to add bikes to tickets bought with PayPal, which is how we bought them originally. For our research, it seems that bikes are almost always allowed on the slower regional trains but never on faster trains unless you basically dismantle your bike to the size of toaster or something like that. But that “almost always” is the kicker, and so we ended up needing to go to a train station, where we could get new tickets with a bike included and get a refund for our other ticket since you can’t add bikes to tickets bought online, no matter that they tell you on the website that you can. Travelling with a bike is always a bit tricky, for sure.
We were jubilant to get tickets in hand, and headed back to the center of town some 4 miles away to have a celebratory drink before going to the museum of human evolution, known in Spain (sort of humorously for English speakers) as MEH (Museo de la Evolución Humana)
The previous day, we had pedaled basically right over the area where the digs are ongoing, and where human remains 1.3 million years old have been found, making them the oldest evidence of human habitation in Europe.
The next day, we departed from Burgos, taking our bikes down the elevator and cycling through the city gates and heading south towards Madrid.
The first days ride south of Burgos is short, and mostly on dirt/gravel roads. We are headed to Lerma.
The walled town of Lerma is pretty impressive. For the first time in Spain, we are camping! Before, it was too hot to camp or there were no campsites available, but we want to try camping in Spain. And it works fine. Our camp host is kind of quirky, but he brings us 2 cans of ice cold beer as we are setting up our tent so how bad could it be? We headed into the town after we got our tent set up and bought some food and a bottle of fine wine for the evening. It’s Sunday and very little is open.
It’s cold that night, like 46F (8C), which is surprising after the days of hot weather, and we stay in our tent until 8AM to give the sun a chance to warm things up. We moved our stuff into the sun to dry things off and then took off towards Peñafiel, about 45 miles away, over rolling terrain of sunflowers and grapevines It’s gorgeous!
The size of churches is amazing sometimes….quite outsized compared to the buildings in the village below. The Catholic Church was and is big in Spain.
As we approach Peñafiel we can see the castle on the hilltop, so big! We admired it as we approached but decided to visit in the morning after some rest. The campground was full of Dutch people which meant it was quiet at night!
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