When I was a young kid my parents had on their bookshelf a volume of cartoons by an artist embedded with GI's on the front line slogging through Europe in the Second World War. I read it again and again when I was 6, 7, 8, and I was particularly impressed by the disproportionate number of references to bad boots, hurting feet, wet socks, and trading packs of cigarettes for dry ones. I remember feeling really sorry for the soldiers. And Mark Helprin, in his terrific WWI novel "A Soldier of the Great War" posits that one can predict which soldiers will survive the war and which ones will die by whether they have hard calloused feet or soft ones.

I think I can relate.

Thank you everyone for your blister advice. I've tried pretty much everything, greasing, patching, draining and treating with iodine, changing socks in the middle of the day, but nothing seems to be solving the problem. I attribute it to good old genetics.

And blisters made today's walk a bit of a struggle. Much of the 14 miles was on ok terrain, but it still hurt. There was about a two mile stretch that was the most treacherous part of the walk so far (even worse than the mud outside Zubiri). An ascent and descent on rutted, uneven earth, a lot of it with deep impressions of tractor tires presumably made in the mud that then hardened in place, all with embedded stones large and small over every square inch so there were just no flat spots to place one's feet. Really tough. And then the last couple of miles of the endless entry into Burgos in the 85 degree sun had me drooping pretty low. My backpack felt like I was carrying a house.

The day was redeemed by the rolling hills, the panoramic views, the sun burning off the morning cloud cover and the mists rising off the distant mountains, the villages with their wonderful walls and doors and shadows, the evocative urban grit on the outskirts of the city, and the beauty of the center city as I inched closer to my hotel. And the fact that I've made it all the way to Burgos!

After sleeping, I mean not sleeping, with seven others in cramped quarters last night, and after being startled awake the night before in my funky pension at 1 AM by a couple fighting with each other in a room down the thin-walled hall and then not being able to go back to sleep, I checked into a luxurious hotel in central Burgos. I'm here for two nights and I'll be taking tomorrow off. That means I don't have to put my shoes back on for about 40 hours, and come to think of it I don't have to move either.