We’re back on the path of the yellow arrows! :-)

Today we walked 13 miles (20.9 km) in 6 hours with a couple of breaks.

Yesterday, Ted and Lisa flew from Sweden down to Madrid and we all met up at the airport. We then took a bus up to Burgos and stayed the night there, and then took a taxi early this morning to Nájera, to continue from where Kathey and I left off last year. It’s Sunday, so a lot of places were closed at 8 in the morning, but we found a little cafe that was open and got our Camino passport stamps — the second Nájera stamp for Kathey and me. Normally after we walk through a little Camino town, we assume we’ll probably never see it again, so it was an odd but nice feeling to return to this one.

We had a couple of fairly steep hills today but nothing too terrible. Otherwise it was mostly on dirt roads away from the highway. Lots of wheat fields and some sugar beets as well, and of course the ever-present red poppies. We stopped after about an hour for a snack in the little town of Azofra, and then continued on. The next little town was Cirueña, which the book describes as a ghost town — and that description isn’t far off. Other than a nice-looking golf course, there wasn’t much there other than a lot of apartment complexes and other buildings that were mostly all sitting empty — apparently because of Spain’s housing bubble and a generally bad economy.

Another few miles finally brought us to Santo Domingo, which has a long history with an amusing story involving chickens and a miracle that brought them back to life (read the story here). We checked in to the albergue Casa de Santo, which is a nice and fairly large place in the center of town. After a late lunch at a bar/cafe next door, we walked down to the cathedral to check it out. It’s famous for having a rooster and two hens, all three very much alive, living in a special pen in the wall where they can be seen in all their miraculous glory. It was a pretty impressive cathedral actually, even without the chickens.

We’re having a great time walking with Ted & Lisa this year, and they’re doing great as well. Tomorrow we’ll leave the town we’ve nicknamed “chicken city” and continue west — always west — toward Santiago de Compostela.

Here are the photos for today…

The night before, in Burgos:

Back to the bus station in Nájera, where we left off last time — now with two extra people in the photo:

Off we go…

A snack in Azofra:

A 15th-century stone boundary marker:

The cathedral in Santo Domingo:

The miraculous chickens!