Belorado

The bronze handprints belong to Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, pressed into wet cement on a quiet back street where laundry still flaps overhead. Most walkers march straight past, eyes fixed on yellow arrows, never noticing Hollywood has already passed through Belorado.

At 772 m the air thins just enough to make rucksacks feel heavier. The town spreads along the River Tirón like a pause button pressed against the Meseta’s exhale; behind, the first wrinkles of the Montes de Oca promise tougher days ahead for anyone heading west to Santiago. Pilgrims speak of Belorado as “the day after Burgos” – a place to heal blistered feet before the mountains – yet the village has been here seven centuries longer than the Jacobean boom, and it shows.

Rock and river

Start at the peñón, the sandstone cliff that does duty as both castle foundations and open-air hermitage. A five-minute climb from Calle del Castillo (trainers suffice) leads to medieval walls reduced to waist height and caves scooped out for solitary monks. The drop is sheer, the safety rail absent; parents will need a firm hand on small climbers. From the lip the whole grid of soportales, orange roofs and allotments fans south towards the railway line that no longer carries passengers. Sunset paints the stone the colour of a Rioja cork, the moment when cameras appear and even the most footsore pilgrim forgets the day’s kilometres.

Below, the Tirón threads a green ribbon through poplars and kitchen gardens. A 3-km riverside path – signed but unmaintained after storms – loops past old waterwheels and the municipal swimming pool (open July–August, €3). Kingfishers flash upstream; locals fish for carp on Sunday mornings and rarely catch anything larger than a hand.

What survives of yesterday

The weekly market on Saturday occupies the wind-tunnel of Plaza Mayor from 09:00 till lunchtime. Stalls sell knobbly peppers, honey labelled only “de la sierra” and vacuum-packed morcilla that British customs will confiscate. Housewives still bring their own wicker baskets; tourists stand out because they queue for the wrong butcher and ask for chicken breasts instead of the whole bird.

Two sixteenth-century churches face off across adjoining squares like elderly cousins who have forgotten the original quarrel. Santa María’s tower acts as the village compass; step inside for a Renaissance retablo that managed to survive both Napoleonic troops and the 1936 fire. San Pedro, two minutes away, keeps its interior gloomily baroque – worth five minutes to admire the gilded lectern shaped like an eagle, then back into daylight. Neither charges entry; both close between 13:30 and 17:00, so plan a mid-morning circuit or risk rattling locked doors.

The old Jewish quarter is now simply “the lanes behind the chemist”. No museums, no kosher souvenir shops, just narrow walls that lean until they almost touch above your head. A single ceramic plaque records the 1492 expulsion; read it and you have done the official duty. The real pleasure is noticing how upper-storey balconies are timbered with beams recycled from the castle after the French blew it up in 1812.

Eating without haste

Belorado cooks for workers, not for Instagram. Bars open at 07:00 with strong coffee and churros that finish by 10:00; arrive late and the apology is a packet of digestives. Lunch menus del día hover around €12–14 and stretch to three courses plus half a bottle of Rioja. Vegetarians cope best with menestra – a spring-vegetable stew topped with a poached egg – but should check that the chef has not tossed in bits of jamón for “flavour”. The local chuletón is carved at the table, Flintstone-thick and designed for two; order it rare or resign yourself to shoe leather.

Evening choices shrink fast outside pilgrimage months. Bar Etoile on the square does a decent Basque-style cheesecake; get there before 21:30 or the last slice will belong to the hospitalero from the albergue. Sunday night every kitchen except the Chinese on the bypass rolls down its shutters – plan ahead or live off tins.

Beds for walkers and drivers

Accommodation splits into two tribes: dormitory bunks for €10 and village hotels for €45–60. The municipal albergue (donation, opens 13:00) issues blankets that smell of pine disinfectant and enforces lights-out at 22:00; across the river, Cuatro Cantones offers a €12 pilgrim dinner if you sign up before 18:00. Non-walkers are welcome but must endure communal cutlery and conversation about ankle tendons.

Casa Rural Verdeancho, ten minutes uphill from the church, has three doubles overlooking vegetable plots and a breakfast strong enough to fuel a week’s hike. British repeaters praise the owners’ directions to “the only ATM that actually works” and the free stash of Compeed blister plasters. Book early for May–October; weekends fill with cyclists from Bilbao.

Getting stuck, or getting out

Belorado lost its railway station in 1985; the nearest trains run from Burgos (45 min by car) or Miranda de Ebro (35 min). ALSA buses link Madrid to Burgos twice daily, dropping passengers on the N-120 bypass – a 1.5-km trudge into town with no pavement. Hiring a car at either airport gives freedom to explore the Montes de Oca; the road to Villafranca Montes de Oca is narrow, unlit and frequented by boar, so avoid night drives.

Winter brings sharp frosts and the odd week of snowed-in solitude. Bars still open but hotels close for deep-cleaning; ring ahead rather than assume a bed. Spring and autumn deliver 20 °C afternoons, ideal for the cliff walk, though Easter week packs the albergues to triple capacity and prices creep upwards.

Last orders

Belorado will never compete with the cathedral cities that bracket it on the Camino, and the village seems content with the arrangement. It offers instead a slice of Castilian routine: butchers who still break down a carcass before coffee, teenagers who drift to the plaza after school because nowhere else stays open, and an evening quiet deep enough to hear the river from the castle ruins. Stay one night and you tick a box; stay two and you start recognising the old men who guard the church steps. The bronze handprints will still be there when you leave – proof that even Hollywood paused here, then moved on.