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Day 20 | 14 August 2025 | Walking the Camino Francés
From Burgos to Hornillos del Camino | 21 km 12.5 miles
We passed by the beautiful 13th-century Catedral de Santa María as we left Burgos. It was only 06:00, yet already warm – the temperature would reach 38°C by late afternoon, so we hoped to reach our destination by lunchtime and avoid the worst of the heat.
About 9 km later, just as we reached the first village of Tardajos, it suddenly began to rain – a heavy, unexpected downpour that lasted only ten minutes. The dark clouds rolled in and disappeared just as quickly, and an hour later everything was dry again, as if it had never happened.
We have now entered the Meseta.
The Meseta is a vast, high-elevation plateau of wide, flat plains in the centre of Spain. It stretches along the Camino Francés between Burgos and León – roughly 220 km over eight stages. Many pilgrims skip this section and take a bus instead, put off by the heat, the flat monotonous un-changing landscape, and few villages with rest stops.
Everyone does the Camino in their own way, we wanted to walk every step of the way so we planned the next 8 stages accordingly.
Hornillos del Camino turned out to be a lovely, quaint village – one of the few medieval pilgrim towns still standing. After checking in, we went out to explore and visited the local Santa María church. It was wonderfully cool inside, a refreshing contrast to the heat outside, and we enjoyed sitting quietly for a while before heading off for a beer – as you do.
We went to the Casa Manalo, a rock-and-roll bar. It was striking how two completely different worlds – the calm of the church and the buzz of the bar – sat barely fifty metres apart. The beer was good, so one quickly turned into two.
Later that evening, when I wandered past again to photograph the sunset, the place was packed with South Koreans singing karaoke. From the sound of it, they had definitely gone well beyond two beers.
