23rd of August I woke up at 2:30 and tried to find sleep again. As my pillow was on the bunkbed right by the door I was woken up each time someone needed to go to the toilet. Mostly they left the door open with the light coming in plus the draft in my face. There I was lying in my sleeping bag and following my mind like in the “Logical Song” by Supertramp. I was thinking about what I had focused on lately and what remains of all the things we were seeing on our way. Is it only the facades we see of which we even don’t have…

22nd of August we enjoyed the great choice of the breakfast buffet, which offered even very juicy Santiago de Compostela cakes which we never had before and grabbed two apples for our tour. Leaving town through a gate in the city wall which was in the style of the moors we passed a suburb of Burgos called “Villabilla” which reminded me of a German TV-advertisement for washing-up liquid where Villariba and Villabajo are both cleaning their Paella pans, but due to the detergent used by Villariba they were already continuing their fiesta while Villabajo was still scrubbing their pans. As there exists a supermarket chain in Austria called Billa I…

21st of August we were able to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary and Robert had chosen a nice hotel in Burgos which was located in a former seminary on the hillside below the Castillo de Burgos to give us a bit of a honeymoon feeling. After breakfast we were ready for some cultural program, but we were astonished to have to stand in line to get into the cathedral as it was turned into a museum. The way this cathedral accumulated human creativity over its building time of five centuries in which more and more styles, altars, tombs and chapels and so on were added to it was so overwhelming,…

20th of August we wanted to start from our hostel not too late as always, but the pumped up tire from last evening was flat again in the morning. Luckily the bike shop was close by and they promised us to get it repaired within one hour, which left me some time to work on my laptop. Everything was fixed and we could start an hour later. We used our museum tickets which were valuable even for today to see the convent of San Franciso before we biked on westwards. Leaving Santo Domingo de la Calzada we were trapped in a construction site of a highway. They had blocked the…

19th of August our hostel offered no breakfast and luckily Robert had found online a cafeteria on the way out of Logronño which offered porridge for breakfast. We were hungry and took even two portions and it helped to calm my tummy trouble. Very helpful when you want to be back on the road again biking. We left the city on well separated bike-lanes in the busy rush hour of the city and reached a beautiful park where all the Logroñians enjoyed their morning walk all the way up to an artificial water reservoir called Embalse de la Grajeira. We had to pass some highway crossings to reach Navarrete up…

18th of August Robert wanted to send a package back home with all the maps from France and the Pyrenees as we wouldn’t need them anymore. It was a bit like we had preached to the Taiwanese girl to send the unnecessary stuff by mail to follow the motto: “ less-is-more”. Robert was able to get rid of 1 kilo of weight – not personally but at least out of his bike bags. At the post office Robert had to get a number and wait in line while I was waiting outside where it started to rain. It was not a lot of rain, but it must have been either…

17th of August another heatwave was predicted for today and we had decided to stay one more night in Pamplona to avoid being on the bikes in more than 40° C. There was still so much to see in this beautiful city that it was great to discover more. They had even a little exhibition about the history of pilgrimage. Pamplona had originally been founded by the Roman Pompeius as Pompeiopolis. The city was destroyed several times by the Moors and in the year 778 by Charlemagne. Later in the 12th century the city got two more fortified cities in its close neighbourhood with different ethnic groups fighting each other,…

16th of August after six hours of sleep I woke up at 3:30 am and needed to climb down the ladder from the bunk bed to go to the toilet. It was at the end of the long corridor passing by all the bunk beds of other pilgrims. I wanted to use the door handle carefully to not make any noise. But someone before me hadn’t closed the door properly and by pushing down the handle the door snapped into the frame and caused a loud bang. Back in bed I tried to find sleep again, but even through my ear plugs the different sounds of snoring drew my attention.…

15th of August the loud music of the festival stopped by five o’clock in the morning. So we were still sleepy at breakfast. Robert had found two Dutch bikers to talk to. Yvonne and her husband who biked all the way from Utrecht. They were not sure if they could make the pass to Roncesvalles with their batteries because it was a climb of more than up to 1.000m of altitude. So they started early to avoid the heat. We were fairly early for our standards to start and say goodbye to Janis from the pilgrim hostel and get out of town just after sunrise. Her name gave me a…

14th of August looked already like autumn. The fog had spread over night in the river valley of the Gave d’Oloron and made it look like a November day. Even the temperatures had dropped a lot overnight. After breakfast the fog had lifted a bit, but stayed still so low that the Pyrenees couldn’t be seen. Normally you can have a beautiful view from Sauveterre-de-Béarn as the terrace at the tower of Monréal is high above the valley. Down by the river a beautiful towered bridge mirrors in the river. There was the story that in medieval times a lady was thrown off the bridge to show that she was…