Burgos

This is not our first visit to Burgos. We called in here before on one of our earlier return trips from Casa Libélula in Jalón. That was just a stop of a couple of hours; now we are here for a few days.

The campsite is a couple of miles outside of the centre of the town. It’s a pretty straight walk along the side of a river so, after getting straight from our overnight rest, off we set. I’d got my camera with me but the river proved less than interesting to any local odonata so I was essentially carrying a few kilos of boat anchor in my rucksack.

As we approached the town proper an appealing café presented itself. Being late morning, we couldn’t resist trying it out. I popped in to order “dos cortados, por favor”. I was a little taken aback when the coffees (a cortado is effectively an espresso – solo in Spanish – “cut” [cortado means cut] with an equal measure of hot milk.) were delivered with a shot of orange juice and a small croissant. All this for €1.50 each.

On our first visit, one of the most striking features of Burgos that we noticed was the lengthy avenue of shade trees on the promenade beside the river. The main town of Burgos lies on the north side of the river Arlanzón, with a good sized open green space to the south of the river. The striking and unusual thing about the shade trees is that the branches of neighbouring trees have been grafted together, somehow, so the entire “arboretum” is an interconnected whole. We were keen to see it again. Following our coffee, we found it.

‘T was approaching lunchtime and we had our hearts set on some tapas. The tourist map carefully plots “the 10 best tapas bars” in Burgos. The cynical amongst you might suspect that these are actually the 10 bars prepared to pay for their establishment being promoted to the tourists. Nonetheless, we plodded around all 10 the offerings. Actually, we plodded around twice and became thoroughly confused with menus getting mixed up and shuffled in our addled brains.

In the end we just opted for one that looked appealing. We sat on a side table and shared three tapas, only one of which I could identify (morcilla on a crouton), which we washed down with three glasses of red wine each. So, six glasses of red wine and three tapas – €20. I can hardly buy one lunch in the UK for that.

Apart from El Cid, Burgos is renowned for its morcilla, the Spanish equivalent of black pudding. What sets morcilla de Burgos apart is that it contains rice. On our first visit years ago, we chickened out of the bewildering variety and didn’t buy any. This time I was determined to correct that oversight and this is the tiny little hole in the wall establishment that we picked for our purchase: Il Primi. When I’ve cooked it with some habas [broad beans], I‘ll let you know what it was like.

We walked the three miles back to the campsite to let our tapas settle.