We arrived on the 15:30 bus from Santander, getting in at a little after 6 o’clock. The roads were as always, superb, billiard table smooth and unlike many buses we’ve taken in Spain, this one stuck to the blue roads throughout. The motorways in Spain resemble videos of the motorways in the 1950s UK. A car or very occasionally a truck potters into view, disappears and some 10 seconds later another appears, moves across one’s field of view before disappearing into the distance.

The route took us through the verdant foothills of the Picos mountains then dropping onto the much flatter, brown, arid terrain near Burgos.

The bus station is close to the cathedral, the beating heart of the city and after dropping off our bags at our hotel, Norte y Londres, an old hotel, pleasant enough but with sloping wooden floors, very disconcerting at night, we made our way back to the square in front of the cathedral.

The next 90 minutes were utterly surreal. I’ll leave it to the videos, sound and images to try to convey what I mean.

Shortly afterwards, the bells stopped and Dorothy and I were able to have our menú del día in relative peace and quiet. However on our way back to the hotel we came across this …

Apparently it’s the feast of St. Peter, the patron Saint of Burgos. They seem to think that he was a pretty combative fellow given the martial music played throughout. All manner of stuff was being wheeled (usually carried piously) through the streets and once the party was over it all got wheeled away again, but this time in a somewhat less dignified fashion.

I’d be interested to see how a poor Galilean would cope with the noise, martial drumming, gold leaf and general bad taste ‘tat’ on evidence today. C’est la vie.

Buen camino