The monastery halls were quiet and it was a peaceful night’s sleep. Before we moved on, the Brothers had breakfast food set up in the dining room.
Our next stop was El Burgo Renero which was a wool producing town, the biggest business of Castila during the Middle Ages. Huge flocks of sheep, up to 40,000 were tended. They grazed in the mountains in the summer while the Meseta fields were occupied with wheat.
Back to small town life in El Burgo Renero, population of about 800. This is our albergue for tonight.
The town had a church that seemed to have a Mexican flare to its architecture.
We were impressed with the community exercise equipment. There were about a dozen pieces of equipment outdoors, facing a field. We tried them all and it was a nice little workout circuit. Our albergue owner said the locals use the equipment in the winter when they aren’t out in their fields.
Somebody “yarn bombed” the whole town. Most of the trees were covered with knitting. There were little yarn pompoms on almost every door. This might have been somebody’s quarantine project. Very charming and gave the town a nice cozy feel.
The tidy little town was very quiet during the day. The only noise came when a tractor or farm equipment rumbled through town. Not much car traffic.
As in many villages, Covid helped close down the little grocery stores. In this town, a grocery store on wheels came through and would park for a while and then move a few blocks away and stop. There probably was a time schedule. People would come down and do their shopping.
We were going to be adventuresome today and try something on the menu even though we had no idea what it was. We discovered Morcilla de Burgos. It was very tasty but had a flavor we couldn’t identify. We asked the waitress what was in it and she said a lot of onions. We had this delicacy a few more times until I started researching it. I discovered it was “black pudding” which is another name for blood pudding. No wonder we couldn’t identify the taste! The “Burgos” version had a lot of onions in it. The morcilla de Leon had a bit of a different flavor. We’re glad we tried it but don’t think we’ll be ordering it again.
Back at the Albergue … there was a lovely grass area with reclining lawn chairs and palapa huts for shade. Almost made me forget I was in the middle of farm land. They also had an outstanding laundry facility and lots of clothesline. It was a good day for doing laundry.
Jane in Spain 