Because I was not walking today, I was able to lie in. So I didn’t get up until almost 10.00, which felt deliciously lazy. This is a particularly unpleasant cold, and I still felt  wretched.

Anyway, I sallied forth, and got on a tourist train.

There was something about being chugged around the city being looked at by passers by that made me feel we were the objects of scorn and horror, like captives in the train of an ancient conquering general bringing his spoils back to Rome. The observed rather than the observers.

I spent the 45 minute trip wondering about some of the riper anachronisms of the commentary, of which the most egregious was the correlation of the building of a 12th Century church in Burgos with the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus a full hundred years before Mechtilde and Gertrude. But it was a gentle and pleasant way to see the city.

I had a salad breakfast/lunch in the Calle de San Lorenzo, where I saw a particularly lovely sight.

After lunch and a rest in the nearby gardens, I went to visit the cathedral. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1984, and their guided visit is managed by asking you to download an app, plug in your ear buds and follow the commentary that way. It was fairly fulsome on the creators of the sculptures and paintings and carving that are round every corner and on every surface. At a number of points it has an incredible wow factor.

And yet, and yet. I was strangely unmoved by it all. The commentary, and every bit of signage in the place, contained not a single word of explanation of what all this art was for. I realized that I had gone through the whole visit without being able to be sure that the cathedral was actually still a church and not just a museum (I asked in the shop, and was told scornfully that Mass was at 19.30). There was no mention of God, or worship. Displays of ancient vestments were unattributed – nothing to say what century they were from, or what they were used for.

By the end of the tour, I was left with the impression that the great art had, in large part, been generated by “great men” exercising economic and artistic oneupmanship over rival “great men”. And that is a part of the story of medieval cathedral building. But there was nothing to put on the other side of the scales. No piety, no prayer, no endeavours for the poor, no holiness. It was a bizarrely soulless experience. Maybe the management of this great world heritage asset has to be like that – but it felt like a terrible betrayal of both their faith who built it and beautified it, and of the faith of Spanish Christians today. And a more balanced presentation would have been a lot more interesting.

Burgos’s most famous son was El Cid. Portrayed by Hollywood as a Christian fighter against the Moors of Al Andaluz, he was in truth, a much more mixed figure, who fought on both sides from time to time. Seeing his chest on display reminded me rather of the way that venerable evangelical church in Cambridge, Holy Trinity, has the Revd Charles Simeon’s teapot likewise preserved.

I met a friend afterwards and we strolled and drank and ate. The Spanish tradition of going out in the evening was in full swing, perhaps even more than usual because this was Friday evening.

I am feeling somewhat post-viral after this fluey cold. It hit me like a ton of bricks after a really promising start to this stage. I have decided discretion is the better part of valour, and am going to postpone the delights of the Meseta. I’m heading home tomorrow. The Camino will be waiting for me, and it will lovely to come back to it when I can fully engage and enjoy it.

I will post a short summary tomorrow of my return travels, and one or two reflections.