Stage 11. Belorado – San Juan de Ortega (23.9 km)

The eleventh stage of our French Route will take us from Belorado to San Juan de Ortega and has two well-differentiated parts. The first stretch will serve as a warm-up, walking along agricultural tracks to Villafranca Montes de Oca. From this stretch, the cereal fields will become half mountain. We will face a long and lonely route with a difference in altitude of 200 meters in the first 3 kilometers. The road goes through oak, pine and heather forests to San Juan de Ortega, which appears as an oasis in the middle of the desert.

This stage is part of the French Way. Would you like to walk it with your accommodation already booked? These organised trips include it: French Way from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela and French Way from Logroño to Burgos.

From Belorado you advance through villages like Tosantos, with its hermitage carved into the rock, to Villafranca Montes de Oca. There the day changes: the dreaded crossing of the Montes de Oca awaits, once a refuge for bandits, climbing to the Alto de la Pedraja through oak groves. After a long descent you reach San Juan de Ortega and its monastery.