Day 11: Belorado to Atapuerca, 30km, 500m ascent

After a warm, humid night in a packed 20 bed hostel room, punctuated by nocturnal utterances from my roommates, I’m awake at 4am. I try to sleep for an hour but I’m out of the hostel just after 5, alone, passing by locals still enjoying the fiesta.

This is my second to last day on the Camino, and the scenery has been a little disappointing for the last few days. We’ve had some amazing patches, but a good amount has been quite miserable, many sections walking along the motorway. Today is different, the walk out of Belorado seems charming enough, but it’s dark for most of it. My walking buddy catches me up at my breakfast stop, I know he’s there when I hear the familiar fizz of a bottle of coke, his preferred breakfast tipple. About two hours in, we reach a small village called Villafranca, and are greeted by some young Spaniards sitting outside a cafe, it’s 7am and they’ve probably been up all night. There’s a lot of that about here in Spain, and I can forgive them their slightly overenthusiastic “buen caminos”.

We leave the village and enter and start to ascend into some stunning oak forests. My companion is struggling with the climbing, but it’s worth it for the views and fresh air. We’re sheltered by the trees, but not smothered by them. The path is wide open and there is enough light for wildflowers to grow alongside. After days of different shades of brown, and dry, spiky vegetation, the flora explodes into life. We’re surrounded by vivid greens, punctuated by white frills, indigo sprays and purple bells of the wild flowers on the path beside us.

There’s a 12.5km walk between villages here, over two hours without refreshment. In hotter weather I would be struggling, in any case, the sight of a van with a table laden with goods is almost a mirage in the middle of the forest. It turns out to be much weirder. We first hear some music, what turns out to be a jazzy rendition of Walk on the Wild Side. The signs say “Dr Coffee”, and we are greeted by a very friendly middle aged Spanish man wearing a cape. We take a coffee, all the while, he is cracking jokes and bantering with us.

We head off from Super Coffee Man with a smile on our face. As I’m leaving, he asks how the coffee was, I say “good”, and he’s a little upset that it’s not the best I’ve had on the camino. We arrive soon in an area of pine forest, the path is wider and there is an abundance of wildflowers, we notice hundreds of butterflies flying around us, black and white, browns, blues and whites. It’s magical. As I’m stopped, one lands on the arm of my blue top, my companion waits for one, and soon enough he has his own little friend.

We stop at San Juan de Ortega for coffee and tortilla, and quickly have some fearless sparrows and robins vying for our crumbs. Nature here it seems, hasn’t learned to fear humans. I leave my walking buddy in the beautiful historic town of Agés, and walk to Atapuerca, where I’ll stay the night. As I’m resting for an hour in the afternoon, I see a curious arthropod on my bed. I check my phone, it’s a different colour to the pictures of bed bugs, it’s gone and I forget about it.

A few more friends join us for the night and we pass a very chilled and enjoyable evening in the local bar.