Life's a Stitch

Long day, long post. We passed the ruins of a Pilgrim Alburgue and hospital built in 1185. That gives you a feel for the numbers who have made the pilgrimage over the centuries.

The primary affliction of those on the Camino has to do with feet. There are worse things. We have passed several memorials dedicated to those who have died on the path, usually at the top of a steep segment. I imagine someone who trudged to the top and stopped to catch his breath when that artery finally gave out.

Back to the feet. We saw a young man wearing one boot and one flip flop due to severe blisters on one foot. A man from Vancouver WA needed to see a doctor for bruises on the bottom of his feet. This woman from Sweden was treated at lunch by two Camino Angels, who roam the Way by car seeking pilgrims in need of footcare.

Footwise we're doing pretty well. I learned an important lesson in making sure your socks are on straight. We're using toe sock liners and one crookedly lined toe resulted in a large blister. C told himself he won't get blisters, but he's having issues with pain in his little toe so he's had a day walking in his soft shoes.

We've walked through many vineyards sampling the grapes along the path. Reds:

And whites:

In the vineyards we've come across many interesting stone buildings designed for storage and shelter.

Inside that one there was a variety of artwork left by pilgrims.

Tomorrow will be a shorter day, 9 or 10 miles, with two stretches of up.

The walking conditions were perfect and perhaps we pushed it – 18.7 miles. Not kilometres, you're reading that correctly. We went beyond our comfort zone and completed 30.1k in about eight hours, not counting two breaks. This is big for us, but many people following the Brierley guide complete similar stages daily. 

We started from Logrono at 7:30a.m. Feeling the last sprinkles of rain we walked in cloudy conditions for two thirds of the day. The conditions today were good, 75% of the terrain was flat or gently rolling hills. Now that remaining 25%…

Our first stop was in the town of Navarette in the wine country of La Rioja.

After second brekkie, a Camino tradition, we visited the church, which looked plain enough from the outside. It was breathtakingly beautiful with a recording of soft chanting in the background.

Stopping for lunch in Ventosa at 1:30, C plied me with a glass of vino tinto and I succumbed to the additional 11k. 

Now we're in our room in a pension in Najera, situated between a beautiful river a steep red cliffs. 

I'll be posting more about today tomorrow. For now we're paying attention to comforting our tender toes. I introduced C to ice water dips for his feet and I can only imagine what the hotel manager thought if he heard C's yelps of pain. Me? I find ice water dips hurt so good.

We are now a quarter of the way through our Camino. Despite our slower days we are on schedule.

Leaving Viana, we found a greeting from a local graffiti artist.

It was a very hot but short 2.5 hour walk through more vinyards into the lively city of Logrono.

Today it's about the food. Most restaurants offer a menu del dia, three courses with wine, ranging from 8-13e. The quality is definitely better toward the higher end.

Some towns only have one bar and the meals consist of a green salad with tuna and hard boiled egg or pasta for a starter, a choice of a baked chicken leg/thigh, pan fried pork or deep fried fish for a main.The side is always fries. Dessert is a commercial ice cream cone, yogurt or grocery store flan. A few days of that can get old so we've stepped up to 12e for dinner, if available, and have had wonderful fish, risotto, and Spain's huge white asparagus. Last night every table, whether one or two were seated, got an entire bottle of wine. It's a good thing we're walking all these miles.

We generally split one of our meals. Today's lunch was a hamburger with cheese, bacon and an egg. A half was plenty.

And this afternoon we shared something I've been anticipating, a regional favourite: chocolate with fresh made churro. The chocolate is thick like pudding. It was so rich we shared with another pilgrim sitting next to us.

We have to pick up our walking pace and have three long days ahead of us. We're also finding that on the weekends rooms are hard to get and we may face cabbing to the next village for a vacancy and cabbing back again in the morning to pick up where we left off.

Being retired, this Camino is our new work of sorts for awhile. It hit me though, that we have had no days off. In that regard we've made a compromise: two short days = one day off. And that's our plan for today (3.5 hours) and tomorrow (2.5 hours).

Last night's accommodation was excellent, a family run pension, El Olivo, that was a veritable watercolour museum, paintings done by the father of the clan.

Today's path lead us through wine country with many ups and downs, some steeper than others.

Tonight we're in a basic pension in the middle of the town of Viana with lots of happy people sounds below. We toured the ruins of the 13th century San Pedro Church, located a block away, which was demolished during the first Carlist War of 1844.

C and I reviewed our expectations vs reality of our Camino experience so far. For me the amount of elevation gain/loss was far more than expected. The guide book seems to be off in that regard. C was surprised at how absorbed he is in the scenery and its changes, rather than in spending the time in any thoughtful reflection.

I've noticed the difference in the sounds of the church bells, town to town. Last night's sounded like a giant cowbell. Another like the ding ding ding on a miniature train in Disneyland or Vancouver's Stanley Park. The frequency of ringing differs, most chiming the hour, then a single stroke on the half hour and some that mark every 15 minutes. Then there are the towns with more than one church so it's all of that multiplied. I missed church bells when we moved to Vancouver, but I hear that Christ Church Cathedral is installing them as part of their renovation.

Have to do some Camino shopping. We've already left behind my toiletry bag and Chuck forgot is phone charger somewhere along the line. It's tough unpacking and repacking every day.

More tomorrow.

Ah, the Camino has many parallels to life, today's being plans are made for changing. What was to be a half rest day turned into 19 kms in the scorching sun.

We left Villamayor de Monjardin at the leisurely hour of 9:30, an hour later than usual, anticipating an easy day.

For some reason this stretch through wheat fields must have been longer than the 10k we were expecting. It takes us an hour to walk 3 miles at home, and 10k being 6 miles should have taken 2 hours instead of three plus.

Halfway through there was a snack stand set up with many shaded seats. My approach to the Camino is to remain positive, however, it was difficult to do so when the proprietor asked people to leave if they weren't spending money. Such Camino spirit. It bugged me to spend money there, but his freshly squeezed orange juice in the scorching sun got the better of me.

Finally arriving in Los Arcos, we checked into Austrian alburgue where we had reservations. It was not as romantic as it sounds. The 35e room was filthy and when I sat on the bed I was greeted by a bedbug.

We couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The town was fully booked and a very nice Robin Williams-esque hotel manager helped us find a room in the next town, two hours away. This one was only 10e more than the nightmare above.

Hopefully no more alburgue rooms for these pilgrims. This is the view from our window in Sansol:

The good part of this story is that we trimmed a couple of hours from tomorrow's very challenging looking day.

Excuse the absence, wifi and even cell reception is sporadic.

It was a 6.5 hour day, pretty reasonable until the end, but all in all a good day on the Camino. Our weather has been exceptional, quite warm balanced with a cool breeze. We're usually on the path at 8:30a.m. While the shadows are still long.

What do you do to while away the hours of walking? I spend time singing to myself: Broadway, Mozart, hymns, songs from high school concert choir and Girl Scouts. Nonsense songs that have a good walking beat: What Does The Fox Say (thanks Mari for gifting me that ear worm), the Ants Go Marching, and Follow the Arrow from Sesame Street, most appropriate for the Camino since yellow arrows and scallop shells guide you along.

That was the largest one we've seen. Most of the time they're small and sometimes you have to search for them like a geocache. Thought we had walked as far as the Pyramids but the yellow arrow assured us we were still on the Camino.

Today we walked by the Irache wine fountain. The company keeps up the tradition of the Benedictine monks, supporting pilgrims with wine and water to fortify their strength, vitality and happiness. The winery gives away 100 litres per day. C says they didn't know I was coming or they would have had a Diet Coke spout as well.

C posing for another tunnel picture. Yes that was after the wine stop:

We've planned for an easy half day tomorrow as I want to take some time to explore some old churches along the way. Besides, the two days after that look tough.

I think the Camino honeymoon feeling is close to over. Today's walk was a brutal seven hours. I had to remind myself of yesterday's "I can do this" feeling. Over and over again. Many ups and downs, maybe not the total gain of yesterday, but far more steep.

It started out OK. You might describe it as fun.

I spoke too soon when at the halfway point I said I couldn't believe that we had covered six miles in two hours. It went downhill, so to speak, from there. We crossed a Roman bridge…

for the opportunity to go way way way up to a medieval hilltop village…

to go way way down an ancient Roman road where the rocks weren't loose, just pitched in all directions…

only to go up and up and up again, through a not so ancient tunnel under the highway…

to finally arrive at our comfortably old world room at the alburgue in Lorca. We are appreciating our decision to go with private accommodation in hostels after seeing a woman wading in the river, her thighs covered in bedbug bites.

I can do this! That's how I felt at the end of today.

I was so worried about today's stretch. Our five hour trek wasn't going to cover a lot of ground, but the ascent was 350 meters (almost 1200 ft) over a short distance. The way up was tough but I took it slow and steadily. It helped to adjust my hat so I could only see four steps at a time then I could concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without thinking about how steep it was. And there we were on Alto de Perdon, feeling on top of the world.

Looking into the distance one way we could see the mountains from where we started. Facing the other, there were the mountains to come. We thought about the settlers coming across the plains and spying a mountain range in front of them. The heck with that, they said, we're not going over those, and that's how we imagined that cities like Denver were established.

You know what they say about what goes up. Going down was a bear. The same 350 meters in reverse, described as ankle breaking, steep and covered in loose rocks in a variety of sizes. Each step required concentration and strategy as to placement. Chuck says his strategy of a couple of beers at the peak worked for him.

We've arrived safely at the alburgue in Uterga.

Plans for tomorrow included a detour to visit to a renowned 12th century church, however it's closed on Mondays so we'll head straight ahead for 20K (12 miles).

We said goodbye to the peaceful Pyrenees, with it's chalet style architecture and cowbells, and walked right into the urban bustle of a colourful city.

Many people take a rest day to explore Pamplona, famous for its bull run during the July festival of San Fermin. We decided to combine Camino walking (the trail goes by most of Pamplona's main points of interest) with sightseeing, plus a late start gave us a rest. We took advantage of the fact that we were staying in a hotel rather than an alburgue where you are tossed out onto the trail by 8:30 a.m. The hotel was basic but very comfortable with hot water and wonderful water pressure. Simple pleasures.

Saturday was a perfect time for our visit, coincidentally timed with a Medieval Festival. There were costumes and music in the streets.

We're experiencing difficulty adjusting our pilgrim activities with the eating schedule in Spain. It wasn't a problem when we were staying in El Vendrell as something was always open and we didn't have the opportunity to become "hangry" as the result of extreme activity. The afternoon siesta is taken seriously with stores closed from about 1-5:00. Restaurants don't open until 8:30pm and by that time we'd prefer to be snug in bed. We wonder how children handle that schedule with school.

Besides that glitch, support for pilgrims seems a regional goal. For days when you need a lighter load Jacotrans will transport your backpack to your next destination for 7e. The pharmacies have an excellent supply of foot care products and services for feet are available in the more populated areas.

When you walk down the street you'll be wished "Buen Camino" by perfect strangers. Crossing a road high in the mountains a driver came upon us honking his horn. I thought he was warning us not to cross as they had the right of way. Instead the car's occupants were cheering us on. It's amazing the boost that provides.

Despite a bad night, where the town's teenage girls sat in circles on the sidewalk squealing and shouting until after 11:00 pm, we got in a good day of hiking. I figure they were trying to attract the attention of the young men staying at the alburgue across the street.

It was a day of perfect hiking, although once again it started with a take your breath away uphill. A total of 11+ miles, about a third was comfortably flat.

Feeling a need to exercise the faith aspect of the Camino I dragged C into what appeared to be an old church near Zubiri, called the Abbey. There was a collection box for the restoration, but things inside the building looked inaccurate, more like Halloween decorations. Turns out it's an endeavour of two friends who want to turn it into a Camino rest stop, not really anything to do with a church. Felt a bit ripped off, would have liked the real story. The guys and the establishment reminded me of the Jimi Hendrix shrine back home, a quirky place run by well meaning hippies.

At the halfway point, in the middle of nowhere there was a pizza place set up for hungry pilgrims, complete with wood fired oven. No kidding it was one of the best pizzas we've ever had, similar to Canada's Famoso, but with an acceptable amount of cheese.

The Camino more than anything is about the people and their intentions for their pilgrimage. Each individual's Camino is a personal and often private experience. We've noticed lots young people and many of our age and older. I guess it's difficult to take the time in the middle stage of life, although some do sections over the course of years.

There is a man we've seen leading another older man with severe disabilities across the Camino, physically supporting him along the way. Today we saw a Mom with her three children experiencing their Camino as a family. The youngest at times was like the Pokey Little Puppy, lagging behind, then playing catch up. Exercising his own Camino made us smile.