Since Pamplona we have mainly lived as pilgrims. That means we have stayed in pilgrim hostels, which offer very cheap accomodation from 17€ for a private albergue in Pamplona we were down to 5€ per person and night at the municipal albergue in Burgos. Some of these are enormous, Burgos municipal alone hosts up to 200 people in summer, 24 in each room (there are at least half a dozen further albergues). So the very attractive price includes close contact with a lot of people, which can lead to not so helpful noise levels and cultural clashes in terms of heat vs oxygen level in the room. But overall it is really interesting as most people are very open and interested to share their experiences. Also night after night you meet old and new acquaintances and sometimes they have heard of us from other pilgrims (thanks to our bike which attracts even more attention here than in France).
From Burgos we left the
Camino frances (the most frequented of them all) to cross over to the
Via de la Plata, another camino from Sevilla to Santiago, built on an even older road from Roman times
https://www.pilgrim.es/via-plata/#Informacion, which we plan to travel "en contravia" so away from Santiago to Sevilla. Unfortunately we got very wet and cold and lost on the way from Burgos to Palencia. What google maps signalled as E80 A64 N620, proved to be one autopista not apt for cycling with the former N620 ocassionally resurfacing for half a km or two. The motto in Spanish road building seems to be to construct larger upgraded roads on older ones. Besides these autoroutes there are unpaved "roads" or paths that also sometimes abruptly end in a fence, e.g. because there is a new railway line constructed....
So we decided to take the train to Salamanca, from where we at least have a guide written by cyclists with maps and alternatives, not google indicating any former terrace in the landscape as path....
This also proved adventurous as the Spanish train system is very centralized, and not at all self explanatory when it comes to bike transport. Via internet and information at the counter in Palencia we were informed of a regional train from Valladolid to Salamanca, that takes bikes (without disarming them) only to be told in Valladolid that there are no trains at all that take bikes to Salamanca. The head of station first confirmed this, but then rushed to the platform where we were starting to dismantle the bike - which usually takes 1.5 hours and we had only 70 minutes ...) that he had found a connection via Avila (half way to Madrid) where we would not have to dismantle...so we travelled 300 km by train to cover the 168km to Salamanca.