Tag Archives: Camino de Santiago

Camino Day 10 – Navarrete to Nájera. Cool day, cool place!

2 Replies

Saturday 26 August 2023 – What a day it’s been! The fierce heat of the past days has subsided to the extent we almost got rained on, what I thought would be an unexceptional walk provided some interesting moments and the destination was unexpectedly awesome.

The Posada Ignatius somewhat let itself down with a very disappointing breakfast experience. We’d asked for breakfast at 0730, but the restaurant staff clearly didn’t get the memo. Someone turned up several minutes after we did and rustled up some “toast” that was still soggy (from being frozen) in one corner, with a little butter and jam – and we provided our own tea bags. A shame, after such a stellar lunch the day before.

No matter; we were on our way at 0800 in cool, cloudy weather – about 19°C and a hint of rain in the air.

After the fan-oven experiences of the previous days, this was very welcome, and the whole walk, some 16km, was conducted in comfortable temperatures. In fact, we did the whole thing in one hit; there was a possible detour for a refreshment break, but we both favoured keeping going. The path was decent for almost all of it, and there were almost no gradients steeper than gentle. I was a bit surprised by this, as the course profile looked like this:

so I had my poles at the ready from the start, but really only got any benefit from them for about 100m in the middle.

Items of interest on the way included: the (presumably reconstructed) portal of the San Juan de Acre church whose excavated site we saw yesterday, now being used for a cemetery;

a different, and much older-looking style of marker post for the Camino;

several rows of vines with their grapes lying on the ground;

(this puzzled us, particularly in light of other rows which had obviously been picked by machine but with no discarded grapes.

The mystery was solved by a friend who explained that production has limits placed on it, to maintain supply/demand/prices, so overproduction is simply discarded and left to rot);

some decent views, although often the scenery was Too Big To Photograph;

a formal viewpoint, accessed by steps

but still clearly a Work In Progress, as they hadn’t provided the info board;

Guardaviñas de Alesón, a shelter, originally built for vine farmers or guards

but now finding more regular use as a general shelter for pilgrims;

Poyo de Roldan, a platform marking a “David v Goliath” style battle between the knight Roldan (possibly Roland, leader of the Franks?) and the giant Ferregut

now doing service as a platform for a telecoms aerial; a poem on a wall;

(“Pilgrim, who calls you?” – put your phone on silent, I say); a couple of charming offerings to pigrims, one from Paulino

and the other having, as a backdrop, the very considerable industrial outskirts of our destination town, Nájera. The cadence of the town’s name is the same as the word “knackered”, not that we were.

This shows that we were nearing our destination, which at first blush is not a prepossessing sight

but the modern exterior soon gives way to the old town at a very clear boundary.

We crossed the river, and this gave us a nice view of the distinctive red stone cliffs which form the backdrop to Nájera.

More of the cliffs later.

Our hotel is the Hotel Duques de Nájera. Our room wasn’t ready for us, which gave us a good excuse to go and find coffee and a sandwich. Yes, and a beer for me. Well, two, actually. I wanted to make sure I staved off dehydration from not having had any water during the walk today. Yes, really.

Having taken possession of our (nice, large air-conditioned) room, we found that, for the second day running, we had managed to synchronise our need for A Nice Lunch with the local restaurant ecosystem’s circadian rhythms. At our first restaurant, we arrived at exactly the same time as another couple. Not wanting to be impolite and rush in, we let them go first – and they took the only remaining table. Hah! Fortunately, by the riverside, there are lots of cafés and restaurants so we still had a good meal.  Then we went for a walk. Obviously.

Once away from the humdrum outskirts, Nájera is a quirky place.

They also have this

which the Powers That Be label thus

but I think there’s tree of them. Thank you.  Thank you for listening to my joke.

Jane, as ever reading around and ahead, had identified two sites of interest – the monastery, Monasterio Santa Maria la Real, and a cave city in the cliffs.

The Cave City, constructed by an ancient civilisation as a defence capability, consists of a series of linked caves in the red stone cliffs behind the town.

It is only possible to visit them on a special guided tour, meaning we couldn’t get close.  But I had my drone back in the hotel room, didn’t I?  So I went and got it.

Since I had it with me, I also took some aerial footage of the monastery.

The monastery, as well as being huge and as impressive inside as it is outside, also has considerable historical importance in its role in the development of the various kingdoms of Spain.  The first construction on the site dates back to the 11th century, it has had various bits fall off and be redeveloped, and was declared a national monument in 1889, since when its fortunes have been assured. Wiki has good information about it.

As you can see from the video, there are several areas, prime among them being the cloisters

and the church, which is lavishly appointed.

The church extends back into the cliffs, with a cave, in which was discovered an image of the Virgin Mary

which was fully restored in 1948. There are many other exquisite things in the monastery, too; too many, really, to share to do it justice. You’ll just have to visit yourself – it’s worth it. If you’re into that kind of thing, of course.

That just about sums up the day – another good one. After a start which saw us walking alone with no other pilgrims in sight, we have started once again to note some familiar faces in the pilgrims we do encounter. We chatted briefly to a Dutch chap called Henk, who joined us in our post-walk refreshment before moving on to his destination.

Generally, the superpower I have whilst cycling seems to have manifested itself whilst walking, too.  On a bicycle, all I have to do is to note to myself that I haven’t been overtaken for a while, at which point a faster cyclist materialises behind me. I mentioned to Jane as we walked out through Logroño’s outskirts that no-one had wished us “Buen Camino”, at which point the next three people we met did just that; and today I ventured to remark that there were no other peregrinos around, and one materialised behind us immediately.  It’s uncanny.

Today’s stats are that we covered 16.4km, bringing our total to 194.5km, just about 120 miles. Tomorrow continues in the vein of ever-longer walks.  We have to get to Santo Domingo de la Calzada, some 22km away, via an overall uphill route which I’m sanguine shouldn’t be too arduous. Accuweather, which seems to have been pretty much on the money here, asserts that the temperature will peak at 21°C, with the possibility of rain after 2pm. Oh, and thunderstorms. It’ll be a longish day and I hope we can avoid the rain.

Let’s see how it turns out, shall we?

Camino Days 8 and 9 – Viana to Logroño

2 Replies

Wednesday 23 August 2023 – Long post warning! Two days’ worth!

The forecast for the day was for it to be very hot, later on, but we only had some 10km to cover, so we thought we could treat ourselves to a lie-in and a hotel breakfast. So the alarm went off at 0530, we were first in the breakfast room at 0700 and were on our way at 0730, with the dawn, as ever, behind us.

The walk itself was easy, being almost entirely flat and very short.  There was not much shade, so we were grateful for the serendipity that we had been able to break our journey at Viana, rather than being obliged to carry on; in the afternoon temperatures of yesterday, that final 10km would have been horrid.

Not only was it short in distance, but it was short on scenery, too. You can see what we thought was noteworthy along the way in the Relive video.

There were a couple of points of interest as we went along, though.

The route was, like previous days, very much in Wine Country. We noticed a difference between the cultivation of vines, with some, which looked like old vines, having clusters of grapes low down, near the trunk

whereas others were arranged more like we have been used to seeing in the vineyards of other countries.

One can imagine that the former have to be hand picked where the latter might be machine-harvestable.  We also saw some very young vines, just bring trained along the wires.

The wine theme was front of mind as we changed provinces, too – we left Navarra and entered the Rioja region, or province.

(Spain is divided into both “autonomous communities” (often referred to as “regions”) and “provinces”. There are 17 autonomous communities and 2 autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla). Within the autonomous communities, Spain is further divided into 50 provinces. Broadly speaking, the regions handle the legislation and the provinces the administration. So, for example, Catalunya is a region – and a troublesome one, if you happen to be in the Spanish national government – and Barcelona is a region within Catalunya as well as a city within its own region. Rioja – properly called La Rioja – is both a region and a province.) 

I hope you were paying attention as there is a test later…

It’s fairly clear at which point one enters Rioja.

Bottom right of the picture, you can see a stone post, which is quite interesting. It’s the ancient marker of where three regions meet, marked entirely illegibly on the three sides of the triangular post.

Alongside Navarra and Rioja is Pais Vasco, the Basque country.

We passed the Ermita de la Virgen de Cuevas.  “Ermita” has a variety of meanings, from “hermitage” to “shrine”, but whichever this is,

it has some nice tiling

and a very striking mural

which Jane considered had no little inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch.

The waymarking was, like the rest of the Camino so far, very clear, with many official marking posts and/or signposts,

some less formal waymarks,

some novel ways of supplementing the official posts

and some nice encouraging ones.

We saw our second matched pair of pilgrims, too.

These were actually identical twins, so a really matched pair.  This was on the way into Logroño, which, from a distance, is just this modern-looking town, with a wide sprawl.

It’s not until you get close that one can make out landmarks in the Old Town. As you approach, though, there’s a very charming encounter awaiting the weary pilgrim.

Continuing a tradition started decades ago by a lady called Felisa, there is often someone there to greet the pilgrims with a smile and a stamp for their credencial. Felisa died in 2002 and her daughter Maria apparently carried on in her place but has also since died.  I don’t know who greeted us this day, but it was nice to see the tradition respected.

It’s at this point that one can start to make out the Old Town buildings of Logroño.

We crossed the Puente de Pedra to get into the town

with its Information Point – the Punta on the Puente.

and made our way into the old town and to the old main street, Calle Mayor and its eponymous hotel.  It was only 10am at this point, and, unsurprisingly, our room wasn’t ready.  Fortunately, since we’d only had a short walk, we were in reasonable nick and so it wasn’t too much of a hardship to have to wander around Logroño for a while until the hotel called to tell us the room was ready.

In any case, we had some shopping to do.  We needed a pharmacy in order to get some more surgical spirit (for foot maintenance, not thirst quenching, of course) and a supermarket for some fruit and other snacks.  We stumbled into the first pharmacy we saw (like a French city, there is a profusion, so it’s not difficult to find one), and it was very attractively laid out.  I had plenty of time to take a photo as the pharmacist gossipped endlessly with the lady in front of us in the queue.

The supermarket gave us the opportunity to buy what we needed and also to reflect on how difficult it is to get international branding right.

We were a bit peckish so headed for Calle del Laurel, which a friend had told us was a good place for tapas bars, and again serendipity came to our aid as the first bar, the engaging Taberna del Tio Blas

was open and, furthermore, served an extraordinary range of pintxos – the Basque interpretation of tapas. The name derives from “pincho” a spike, since the ingredients are secured with toothpicks.

As we were munching through our selection, we were hailed through the bar’s open windows by a “Camino family” member from our first days on the Camino; a Canadian lady called Lesley, who had made it to Logroño the day before and was having a rest day.  We got chatting over a speciality of the Taberna, a Granita – basically a Rioja-based slush puppy – which both Jane and Lesley thought delicious. I stuck to beer, not because I didn’t like it but because I wanted to stick with what I knew. Lesley confirmed that the final 10km yesterday from Viana was, indeed, brutal, so we were very glad for the way our route had worked out.

Since Lesley and others had made the extra mileage and will now be a stage ahead of us, we wondered if we would now start to build a new “Camino family”. Over the first week, we’d encountered familiar faces on multiple occasions as a cohort moved through the towns and villages.  But now these people are likely to be ahead of us and so I suppose we’ll start getting used to a new set of peregrinos.

En route back to the hotel, who had called us to tell us the room was ready, we ducked into a very striking-looking market building, the Mercado San Blas,

where business was brisk.

Our route back to the hotel took us past the cathedral

with its extraordinary entrance

and equally extraordinary interior.

It even has a Michelangelo painting – kept in a secure and darkened case.

Regrettably, we did’t have a 50 cent coin to use to turn illumination on for the painting; the above was the best I could do, but once again it demonstrates how good mobile phone camera technology is these days – in real life one could barely make out the painting at all.

The hotel, we discovered, is a four-star hotel.  The discerning traveller will know this from various clues: you get two pillows! each!; and the laundry costs a bloody fortune. Oh, how we wished we’d taken up on the offer from Jose in Los Arcos to do our laundry for €1!  To do all our necessary items would have cost hundreds, so we ended up handing over only difficult items like shorts and shirts and doing our own knickers and socks.

And so we took our rest in the hotel.  Los Arcos to Logroño – a 28km-long stage which our organisers fortunately broke into two bite-sized chunks for us – is number 7 of the so-called “Brierley stages”, named after John Brierley, the author of many popular books about the Camino, one of which is helping us along our way with very useful information and insights.  John died in July and Jane noticed that his obituary recently appeared in The Times.

Having rested, we once again fell foul of Spanish dining traditions and Google. We wanted to go out for a decent meal (the hotel may be four-star but it offers neither dinner nor a bar) but it was around 5pm. Google swore that Café Moderno was open and its own website gave us to believe that it served full meals. It was close by – a good thing since the outside temperature was 42°C – so we went there.  It’s a great bar, with a nice vibe

and a wall full of interesting objects,

but all it offered was tapas. We both really wanted a proper meal, with vegetables, so moved on after just a drink.  We tried Restarante Iruña, which Google told us was open; but it was so closed it was actually difficult to find.  However, it was in Calle Laurel and Good old Tio Blas was open so pintxos it was again.

Thus ended the day, with an early night and the prospect of a rest day spent avoiding the heat. Here’s Accuweather’s assessment.

Thursday 24 August 2023 – When we woke at about 8am, the temperature was 20°C. When we sat down to breakfast at 9.30 it was 25°C. By the time we’d finished breakfast it was 30°C. And when we went out at about 11am it was 35°C. As we came back from wandering about it was 40°C and I for one was very glad to get back into the cool of the hotel. But we covered some ground looking around Logroño old town.

Unsurprisingly, this being a pilgrim route, there are many churches. Unsurprisingly, therefore, lots of photos of churches follow. Just so you know.

The first one was the Church of Santa María de Palacio, which was actually being thoroughly worked on by builders, and so was half screened off, with the Important Bits brought into the working half of the church for services.

There were a couple of lovely stained glass windows

which cast nice light.

We also visited San Bartolome church, the oldest church in Logroño

which has an amazing 13th-century porch.

Inside is not opulently decorated

and features a noted carving of Christ on the cross.

The final church we visited was the church of Santiago el Real.

The pavement outside, popularly known as Plaza de la Oca, displays a representation of the “Game of the Goose“. Pilgrims can “play” the stages of the Camino de Santiago and its most representative monuments. This mosaic game was made in 1991 by Ricardo González, with the collaboration of the sculptors Félix Reyes and Pepe Iglesias. Here’s a fragment of the game as laid out in the plaza.

Beside the plaza is the Santiago fountain, also known as the Pilgrim’s Fountain.

This church also has a magnificent doorway.

We stepped inside, but a service was under way, so I just grabbed a shot and we left as discreetly as we could.

Logroño has another religion besides Christianity – wine. One thing I hadn’t appreciated until very recently is that it’s the capital of the Rioja region. The Camino runs along one road, Calle Ruavieja, which was a centre of small-scale wine production since medieval times, home to several wine cellars, mainly built in the 16th century. Some of the old bodegas are still there, albeit no longer active.

 

There is a museum on this road called “El Camino del Viño” which gives an engaging insight into the traditional ways of making wine, based around an excavation of one of the buildings, showing the pits where grapes were unloaded, trampled or pressed, turned into wine and stored.

Presses and other equipment from the 18th century are also on display, and across the street an ancient cellar from which hospitality would be offered to the pilgrims of yesteryear.

As we walked around, we saw a lot of street art (among the ubiquitous graffiti).

and there was one very striking mural to be seen,

showing a figure covered in Credencial stamps, including (if you look carefully) Felisa’s.

We’ve seen a lot more and wandered surprisingly far and wide, given that the temperature was 40°C – city walls, pilgrim statues, the Rioja Museum (which is about the history of the region, not the wine), but I feel I’ve regaled you with enough (probably too much, actually) about our time here in Logroño.

We move on tomorrow – a shortish walk of about 13km to Navarrete. Accuweather predicts cooler temperatures – all the way down to 30°C! We’re hoping for a light day to ease us back into the habit of daily walking until our next rest day.  I might bring you an update tomorrow, so better get some rest in just in case, eh?

 

Camino Day 7 – Los Arcos to Viana. We beat the heat – just!

6 Replies

Tuesday 22 August 2023 – It’s been a good day.

Let’s rewind to yesterday evening, though, because I haven’t covered it, and it introduced some new experiences for us.

As I noted yesterday, our hotel was an albergue, a simple hotel whose main clientele would be pilgrims. Many of the rooms share bathroom facilities, but we had our own loo and bathroom, which was nice. Jose, the manager, is extremely affable and capable, and he persuaded us to partake of the hotel’s Pilgrim Dinner at 7pm. This meal type is a very common offering in the simple accommodation for pilgrims on the Camino. As you’ll have noted, though, we had arrived early enough for us to recover some of our equilibrium after an extremely hot and sweaty final few kilometres, for me to write up the day and for us to think we should go for a walk.

Not obviously, actually.

It was, once again, stingingly hot, and the idea of simply lying prostrate in the room did have some merit. However, There Was A Church (Santa Maria) which Jane’s reading around had made it clear that we should visit. So we did.

Crikey!

It’s some church. We haven’t been able to divine the reason that such a one-horse (albeit old) town has got such an up-market church, but there it is, and one of the things it is known for is a “Black Virgin”. There are many of these around Catholic and Orthodox churches, and many of them are paintings or icons; Santa Maria here has a statue.

The original dates from 1175, and was restored in 1947, when the black colour was removed. Who says “woke” is a modern thing, eh? However, the oriental outlines of her face are clear, as is the extra attention paid to carving her rather then the child, showing that the mother is the more important figure. How could they think that? I mean, Jeez!

Other figures in the main altar are carved with astonishing skills and detail.

Every part of the interior of the church is decorated

and the organ is described as one of the two or three best in Navarra. It’s certainly ornate.

We had to leave the church discreetly, as a funeral service was about to start. Los Arcos hasn’t much else to offer the sightseer, particularly not on a day where the temperature was verging on 40°C. What we really needed was a drink, so we blundered about a bit until we found one that was open and ordered glasses of something cold. The bar was almost deserted when we got there, but soon some more customers came in,

all male. Jane reckoned that the wives were in the church, which would be a shockingly chauvinistic thing if true.

We arrived back at the hotel in time for our Pilgrim’s Dinner; eight pilgrims hosted by the affable Jose

who’d got everyone’s name and could talk to most of the diners in their own language. The fare was simple, but wholesome – a large salad, lentil soup with chorizo and a dessert of something approximating lemon Viennetta, all accompanied by wine and bread. Not bad for €10 per head.

The meal was an opportunity to talk to other pilgrims. We sat with a Dane, Søren, and a Korean chap whose name we never established, and chatted about the sorts of things one does when meeting strangers; and a pleasant meal passed quickly.

The only downside was the timing, really. We had decided that the next day (that’s today, keep up at the back) would be punishingly hot, so a really early start was needed. An 0430 alarm demands a 2030 bedtime if enough sleep is to be had, and there wasn’t really time for our digestive systems, already stunned by the arrival of the first vegetables for simply days, to settle into getting on with their business.

Also, it was hot.

There was a fan in the room, but even with it going full blast, getting restful sleep was difficult. The alarm went off at 0430 and I particularly was very bleary as we went about getting up and getting out as soon as we could. The breakfast was very simple, but at least we could make ourselves some tea, again the first we’d had for a while. And at 0615, off we went on the day’s adventure and in the dark.

If you’d like to see the summary rather than read the gory detail below, then you can watch the Relive video,

When we left the roads of Los Arcos for the track of the Camino, at first we needed a torch to light our way and make sure we didn’t trip over anything on the track. But it soon lightened up as the dawn broke behind us.

Rather than bore you with all the photos I took (you can see most of them in the Relive video), let me just pick out some random bits.

Every so often, the track appeared to feature a crack across it.

which turned out, on closer inspection, to be a column of ants.

Other life, both wild- and tame- provided some cabaret, It was lovely to see swallows fluttering about in the eaves just enjoying the sunshine

or going to and from nests in the church tower.

A shepherd temporarily halted traffic as he got quite a substantial flock of sheep across the track.

Plant life featured strongly, The sloes hereabouts are really ripe and seem to glow in the sunshine,

olive plantations and vineyards gave lovely patterns to the landscape,

and the odd occasional lone sunflower could be seen, presumably sown by a passing bird.

The scenery generally was not as Big as in previous days, but there were some beautiful vistas for us.

As usual, the track wandered from town to town. The main ones we saw to day were Sansol

and Torres del Rio, the latter of which provided our first refreshment break of the day.

We passed a hermitage (Ermita del Poyo) with a lovely tiled image of the Virgin Mary on its wall,

and, via a final refreshment stop

caught our first sight of Viana, our destination,

just as the day was making its transition from cool and pleasant to hot and sweaty. Our timing had been good, and the serendipity which led WalkTheCamino to organise for us to break our journey here was excellent; many other pilgrims we talked to had elected to carry on to Logroño, the next town and some 10km further, and I think those kilometres might have proved rather burdensome. As it was, we eventually arrived in pretty good nick, all in all.

The closer you get to Viana, the less attractive it looks. It’s clearly a thriving town, with lots of modern buildings and quite a bit of construction of new houses going on on its outskirts.

Once you tunnel through the modern shell, though, the old town is very attractive.

There’s a multipurpose bullring-cum-football pitch

overlooked by a building with a balcony for spectators.

The town hall has a very attractive frontage

and the streets, as we arrived around midday, had a busy, buzzy vibe.

As luck would have it, our hotel, the very swish Palacio de Pujadas (air-conditioned! hurrah!) had rooms ready for us, so we could immediately get ourselves cleaned up and rested before going out to find some lunch.

We arbitrarily blundered into the first of the many, many places offering refreshment on the main drag, the Casa Armendáriz, and had a Really Nice Lunch, the first time we’d sat down for a proper meal, with menus an’everyfink, for very nearly a whole week. The place eventually filled up with other people doing substantially the same

so I think that once again serendipity worked in our favour. When we came out again, it was to strangely deserted streets;

all the busy, buzzy vibe had evaporated as the sun’s heat took hold.

Viana has A Church To Be Seen, another Santa Maria. Unfortunately, it was closed, and photos were made difficult by a covering of scaffolding and nets. But the nearby ruins of San Pedro church are worth a visit

and its gardens have a lovely feature whereby atmospheric music plays in the summer heat. We weren’t sure whether we tripped this via some kind of motion detector, but the effect was lovely.

By this stage, the heat was beginning to become too oppressive, so we scurried back to the hotel to rest for the remainder of the afternoon.

So: the stats for the day:

  • Distance – 19.1km, thus our total is 155.2km, or just over 96 miles.
  • Ascent/Descent – a relatively modest 362m and 340m respectively, There were a couple of short and steep pulls, but overall it was quite an easy day’s walking.

Not too easy, though – I have my first blister! It’s on the side of my big toe and I think I might be able to get away with leaving it severely alone to heal itself. I’m wearing socks and sandals (sorry!) for the walking and this appears to be a pretty comfortable way of getting about; I’m hoping I have judged this right, but you’ll have to keep in touch with these pages to find out, won’t you?

We have a short walk tomorrow, a mere 10km to Logroño, where we have a rest day! Hurrah! If the heat permits, we expect to have a good old nose around Logroño so I’ll report on that and the walk there in a couple of days. See you then, I hope.