Wow, I must be something wrong with me, I have the greatest difficulty in getting out of town and onto the right path. Perhaps I’m not as much a morning person as I thought I was.
Getting out of Burgos this morning included almost getting to the tool plaza of the motorway and, upon rectifying that mistake, a mile through a mud ridden country track.
Still the good news is that i did nearly all the 61 miles I was not planning to have to do on P roads, those are the provincial, hardly used, and totally deserted road that criss cross the Spanish landscape. For a change they were going in my general direction and did not add an offensive amount of miles to the day.
The cool thing was that I must have met three truck and a dozen of car in the whole day. Having the road for yourself is great and allows for music without regret and bad habits to come back [note that the helmet is again proudly hanging from the back of the rack].
I do believe that today not wearing the helmet was more of a necessity than a choice. When I left Burgos at nine the temperature was 5º C and I did leave at that time precisely as it would have been less than that before. My Decathlon gloves and cap are doing an OK job, but when the sun is behind the clouds, they struggle to keep the chill away. Weather forecast encouraging for the next few days so there should be no train before Salamanca.
Once I found the right path today was very simple, there was little to look at except miles and miles of nothing dotted with electricity and telephone poles.
I had some Tapas in Santa Maria del Campo with the locals looking at me quite funny but not exchanging much conversation. After that it was just cycling all the way to Torquemada.
Now, Torquemada was where I was going to stop. It made sense. Not too far and allowing me to divide the road to Salamanca in four reasonable days. It even looked like it had some accommodation and I was somehow attracted by a name that tickled my memory for some reason that I did not know.
Well, let’s dispense the practical considerations before we discuss that. When I got to Torquemada I realised it was a bit of a dive. All was closed and the only hotel in town was closed too. This meant my 46 miles day had to be transformed to a 61 miles day stopping in Palencia instead.
Now back to Torquemada. I now know why I knew the name, it is because of Tomás de Torquemada, one of the first, and probably the best known Spanish Inquisitors. I must have studied it at school. What I find fascinating in reading the Wikipedia page is that someone form a Jewish background would be fervently instrumental in the persecution of Jews in Spain.
All well in the end, I’ve done a bit of accidental tourism and got to Palencia with time to sort out my mobile phone [all those who have not seen any FB or WA or Twitter poststoday, the reason was no more credit on the phone], and find a nice and yet cheap room. It is great that down here you get a single room for the price of a dorm in the UK, look forward to see the prices in Africa.
Addendum: 22:02
I have now had the steak I did not manage to get last night, it seems almost all restaurants close on sunday night in this part of Spain. Very nice. I wonder if I will be able to have a steak in every country I go? Probably not in Mauritania.
