Saturday (08.10.) Our week starts at the top of a hill. Together with Daniel we took down our tents and got ready to go. Before that, we eternized on Daniels bike bag.
The last meters of altitude that we didn't do yesterday warmed up our legs for the descent to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. There, we bought something for breakfast and after a long hunt for a good spot to sit down, we found what we were looking for. At a picnic spot, we finally devoured our breakfast in a typical Spanish way: Dipping biscuits or bread in coffee or cocoa.
Strengthened, we drove up the first mountain of the day. In itself it was a pleasant ascent, the only nasty thing was that we were expecting the summit behind every curve. However, we had to wait a little longer... After that we took a little break in the village of Beldorado (not to be confused with El Dorado!) and Daniel had his pilgrim's passport stamped. In the meantime, a Swedish flag fluttered towards us!
Daniel also briefly tried out the position as co-pilot on the back of the tandem. After a short ride uphill, we all went back to our usual places. On top of the next hill, Daniel unpacked his drone and filmed us epically rolling down the hill. Shortly before Burgos we overcame the last mountain and then let ourselves roll comfortably into the city. Daniel went to a campsite and we went to the Mountain Rescue and Search Dog Center in "Castilla y Leon". There, we got in contact with Álvaro via the rescue-dog-community, who gave us a warm welcome. After the warm shower and delicious dinner, we chatted for too long, as always, until late at night.
On Sunday (9.10.) we woke up not on our sleeping mats, but on a comfortable camp bed in the Search Dog Center. We ate breakfast together with Álvaro, his super cute dog "Kiwi" and another rescue-dog-person. As an exception, we used the bus to get to the city center of Burgos. While I went to the toilet, Tilman used the time to go to a church before the service started. Afterwards, we made our way to the famous cathedral in Burgos. The Pilgrims' scallop can be found around every corner: when it's not hanging from a pilgrim's backpack, you'll find it on the floor or on the walls. They even found their way into the shop windows of tourist shops. A bit too much, we think.
Burgos is not very big and the city center consists of many small and cute streets. Unfortunately, we had to find out that inside cathedral you were only allowed into the anteroom. We were told it was due to a late-night concert. You can't always be lucky.
From the outside, the cathedral looked very impressive! We will definitely come again!
We continued uphill to the castle. From there, we had a wonderful view over the city.
The entrance to the castle was free and so we walked along the guided path alongside and on top of the fortress walls. On the way back, we got a quick empanada and something sweet against the first hunger and met Daniel in the city. Together, we were looking for a proper meal. Álvaro recommended a good and cheap place. We had to wait about 5 minutes to get a table. That was also rather lucky, since we arrived after the typical Italian lunchtime and the big rush was over. Daniel ordered a mixed plate and Tilman and I each ordered tostadas with different toppings. After this extensive refreshment, we went through the small streets of Burgos, along the river to have a look a bit outside at the monastery. Again, a recommendation from Álvaro. Unfortunately, the monastery was closed as well and so we only admired the walls from the outside. Together, we made our way back. Tilman and I took a siesta by the river while Daniel started his tour of the city. After the afternoon nap, we made our way back and admired the art in the city.
When Álvaro called us and said he could pick us up from downtown, we gratefully accepted the offer. Upon arrival back at the Search Dog Center, we met the rest of the team, who had an exhausting day, and talked for a while. We had dinner with Álvaro and chatted vividly about the history of our countries.
After a good night's sleep, Monday (10.10.) began with a small breakfast. At some point Álvaro had to go because he had an appointment in town. On our way through the city by bike, we kept seeing Álvaro's bright yellow car and we did a little horn concert. Out of Burgos, the first few kilometers were relatively flat, but the landscape was also pretty monotonous. The closer we got to the Cordilliera Cantábrica, the more hills we saw.
Towards the evening, we could see a thunderstorm from afar and then enjoyed dinner.
The goal of our day was to climb one last mountain, so we gathered our last strength and fought our way up the last few kilometers of altitude. A plateau awaited us at the top and we decided to pitch our tent between some bushes. After all, it was already getting dark. We packed the last things into the tent just in time when we heard the first raindrops on the tent. After a while, we had to realize that we hadn't stretched our tent properly in the dark, nor had we put the tent pad properly under the tent... Unfortunately, this resulted in some moisture accumulating under my sleeping mat. Heroically, Tilman offered to go out in the heavy rain to tighten the tent better and to let the tarpaulin disappear under the tent. At least it prevented more moisture from getting into the tent. What was already inside, we couldn't get out again that quickly.
On Tuesday (11.10.) morning the rain had stopped and we packed up the soaking wet tent and enjoyed the morning descent. In the small village "Congosto de valdavia", we used the dry market place and the first rays of sunshine of the day to spread out everything and let it dry.
The marketplace was right in front of the Ayuntamiento (city hall) and so it happened that a nice woman came out of the building, watched us curiously and ended up talking to us. She told us that if we had arrived last night, we could have slept in the multi-purpose hall and to top it, I even got a fresh coffee 😊. We quickly became the morning attraction of the village and had to turn down a number of offers for help. Tilman helped the – for lack of a better description – village caretaker to winterize the public drinking water tap. With a heavy heart, we said goodbye to the village to continue our journey. Today we cycled mostly uphill. Before we would cycle over our final pass tomorrow, we first had to climb two smaller passes.
The landscape was somehow different than in the Pyrenees but very beautiful. It's best to get a picture yourself 😊.
On the way to the last pass we passed a huge reservoir lake, which accompanied us for a few kilometers and offered wonderful motifs for photos. The "Embalse de Riano" reservoir supplies approximately 84,000 hectares of land with water. It also swallows the old road when it is completely full. When it's not full, you can still see the road, as shown in the photo.
As it slowly started to get dark, we were looking for a sleeping place. Since this can be difficult in a hilly landscape and in the mountains, one strategy has proven itself particularly useful: On OpenStreetMap we look for picnic tables or even entire "picnic sites" beforehand, as these are usually a bit flatter. And so we pitched our tent at dusk and fell asleep, cuddled up in our sleeping bags.
The next day, Wednesday (12.10.), surprised us at 7:00 in the morning with a super bright moon and some fresh 4 degrees inside the tent and 1 degree outside. Luckily we didn't skimp on our sleeping bags! Since we had slept about 6km before the pass, our goal was to be at the top by sunrise.
On the way up, our bodies warmed up well from the sportive activity and shortly before the pass the sun came out behind the hills. When we got to the top, we had a fantastic view. We were above the clouds! On the other side of the mountain we could even watch the clouds rolling over the mountains.
Such views are simply amazing and remind us why we are on this trip. The freezing cold and long descent afterwards made us feel every part of our body - though not in the most pleasant way. Unfortunately, the cafés in the villages were closed, so there was no good opportunity to warm up. So we wanted to warm up some tea ourselves, but then unfortunately had to realize that our matches didn't want to. And so "lighter" ended up on the shopping list for the next time. After we had already driven about 30km, the sun slowly came out and in a café we actually found what we were looking for and I got a nice hot coffee. The best feeling ever! A man in front of the café found us interesting and immediately took a few photos of us in action.
However, a few kilometers later, we made a longer lunchbreak. Up to here everything went downhill and there were actually well-developed cycle paths in the villages. But the mountain that we then had to climb as cyclists was really not funny! While the cars on the motorway may drive conveniently through a tunnel, we fought our way up the mountain for about 4 km with a good 10% incline, only to then brutally lose meters in altitude on a similar decline... Shortly before Gijón we had a similar problem. Luckily, not quite as bad as the mountain before. And we were rewarded with a long and smooth descent down into town. Really nice!
So we drove towards the outskirts of the next town where Miguel, another rescue-dog-person, had a holiday home where we were allowed to stay. We arrived after a last juicy climb. Altogether, we covered about 120km and 2000 meters of altitude that day. We have more than earned the warm shower! We snuggled into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
On Thursday (13.10), we got out of bed relatively late. Our first way today was to the farmacia (pharmacy) because my cystitis hadn't completely recovered. I got antibiotics for 2 days and with that I was able to get it under control. After that we went shopping, had a bite to eat and were picked up by Miguel. In the afternoon, we were allowed to accompany him at his work with the dogs. The first station was the university. A project is currently developed where dogs' sense of smell can be used to identify people with cancer using saliva samples. If things go well, one could in the future test for cancer more efficiently than with conventional laboratory methods. Super interesting to see how the training works and how well it works under laboratory conditions!
Since the university was close to the maritime institute, we immediately took the opportunity to see if we could take a look at the planetarium. According to the database (apfl-Planetarium) there should also be a ZKP2 here. The woman at the reception was very friendly and did everything to help us. However, she couldn't find anyone with a key and said we should try again tomorrow. And so our adventure with Miguel continued and he took us to a Help Center for people with mental and emotional disabilities. They offer therapy sessions with dogs here. It was nice to see how warmly Miguel treats the people and how much fun it was for the people to work with the dogs. After that we went out to eat with Miguel and his wife. We had a table with many different dishes that we were allowed to try. A beautiful evening!
We also started the Friday (14.10) quite slowly. First and foremost, we tried to catch up with blog writing. Here's a big apology to everyone who had to wait so long! Around 11:00 we set off for our city tour.
Since it was the closest, we went to the planetarium first. Unfortunately, the woman at reception was different and, to be honest, didn't look very nice. But thanks to our persistence, we were able to convince her to give us a chance. We should wait a bit because the director was in a conference. In the meantime, we talked to a younger employee who wanted to assure us several times that their planetarium was broken. By the way, also a ZKP2, like the one that could still be found in Potsdam up until this summer. When I mentioned that, hope rose that I could fix it... When the director let us in, I was able to impress them right away by knowing which buttons to use to turn on the light. Their surprise and unfamiliarity with their system made me doubt that they could judge whether the system worked or not. After a quick check of important functions on my part and some anecdotes from other planetariums, I realized that the ZKP2 wasn't brand new, but it was definitely functional and fit for a show. Somehow our two companions weren't quite as enthusiastic and also rather semi-interested. After 10 minutes of weird mood we left the planetarium and I call it the saddest planetarium of our trip.
Out of frustration, we first got ice cream in the nearest supermarket and went to the post office to get Tilman cool stamps. Unfortunately, it turned out that the cool stamps can only be ordered online, so we only bought normal stamps with a very strange picture of the Spanish king for our postcards.
Then we went on to the city center, with the old town, many churches and the Roman thermal baths. Our way back took us along the beach to the cliffs, where we - rather Tilman - couldn't resist taking pictures of the city at sunset.
Back at the house we cooked for Miguel and Elena. After that we fell asleep very exhausted. Unsurprisingly, after a 20 km walk!
Today there is again a constellation to complement the story of the autumn sky. Today it's about Andromeda. Andromeda is to the top left of the Fall Square (Pegasus). Andromeda is mythologically a princess from ancient Ethiopia. More specifically, she's the daughter of Cassiopeia and Cepheus. But also from an astronomical point of view there are some interesting things to be found here. For example M31 (Andromeda galaxy), the spiral galaxy closest to us.
That's it for this week. In the coming week we want to reach Santiago de Compostela and slowly approach Portugal.
Adios! Tilman & Ida