The Spanish Meseta

The last few days, from Estella to where we are now, 70km east of Leon, have been spent on the flat, straight roads and under the hot sun of Spain’s central plain, the meseta. Despite what you may have heard, the rain in Spain falls mostly not on the plain. The earth is dry here, baked by the sun, so much so that we have trouble getting our tent stakes in the ground. A few nights ago we had to tie one of the corners of the tent to one of our bikes, as it was impossible to stake out that corner!
The riding has been mainly uninteresting. Huge flat fields of wheat, lots of churches and lots of wind farms. Our route took us throughy the two small cities of Logrono and Burgos. In Burgos we stayed with an incredibly fun and nice Welshman named Jeremy. He had some great stories and plenty to say, about everything.
We explored the old part of burgos, the most interesting bit being the enourmous gothic cathedral. The vast majority of churches in Spain fall into two categories. One set are closed o the public. The other main set have an entrance fee, the discounted price for pilgrims ranging between 1 and 4 euros. We, for reasons of both budget and principle, refuse to pay to go into the churches. We haven’t payed for a single “touristy” thing the whole trip. The Burgos cathedral had a ticket office that was a little ways from the entrance of the church. We walked into the church to see if there were any parts available to the general, unpaying public. There was, and from there you could catch a glimpse of the main part of the cathedral. There was even a video shwing the highlights of the cathedral. We supposed it was to show you what you were missing. There was a man in a glass cubicle watching as people walked in, but he didn’t seem to be checking tickets. A big tour group arrived and we decided to walk in with them. We didn’t really think that we might stand out among a group of aging Japanese tourists, even though Rob was a head taller than any of them, and adie was a veritable giant! We thougt the church and attached museam were great, well worth the price!
Not much of interest since then, we will post again as soon as possible.