Tag Archives: Pilgrimage

Camino Day 11 – Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Dogged by Poor Weather – rain, 10:10*

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Sunday 27 August 2023 – It seems appropriate that on a Sunday we should be travelling to a place called Santo Domingo. “Domingo”, after all, means “Sunday” in Spanish, which means that the famous (and now infamous) operatic tenor Placido Domingo would be called “Quiet Sunday” in English.  This is just one of the many examples when Foreign Is Better Than English:

  • Giuseppe Verdi – Joe Green
  • Ferrari – Smith
  • Maserati Quattroporte – Maserati Four Door
  • Le mot juste – erm…let me think…

Anyway, back to the walking thing, Walker.

If you want to see the summary of the route and photos, you can watch the Relive if you’d like. Alternatively, read on…

The forecast hadn’t changed significantly overnight, but cool temperatures were expected and the probability of rain had increased. We hit the hotel’s breakfast room at 0730, its supposed opening time, to find several peregrinos already stuffing their faces, so we could clearly have been earlier. No matter, we discovered that there were large mugs in which we could infuse Twining’s finest Earl Grey, which meant that the day got off to a good start.

When we actually started walking, the temperature was 16°C or thereabouts, which would have been fine, but it was somewhere between breezy and windy, which kept things on the cool side of comfortable, actually. There was a hint of rain in the air, too.

As we went through the day, the sun came and went, and gave us a great variety of scenes as its patterns flitted across the landscapes in what became really more a wind than a breeze.

There was ever the threat of rain in the air.

The road wound along

past vineyards, mostly.

We encountered our first village along the way after just 6km – Azofra.

There was a cafe called “Bar el Descanso del Peregrino” – meaning “The Pilgrims’ Rest Bar”.

It would have been rude not to stop (and in any case the next bar was not for another 10km), so we popped in for a coffee. They also sold Kit-Kats, so we had one each, which wasn’t as pleasurable as it might have been; whatever they do to make the chocolate in this country ain’t the same as it is in England, regrettably.

For a large village/small town, Azofra punched above its weight as far as points of interest is concerned. Jane is into armorial crests and so this building

scored heavily with her. There was a style of waymark which we hadn’t seen before,

an intriguing bit of junk statuary in someone’s front yard,

interesting decor idea for park gates,

some eccentric construction,

and a medieval rollo.

This (now heavily-restored) column originally functioned as a judicial and administrative marker and was where executions were held. I don’t think they use it like that any more, though.

Our luck with the weather ran out eventually. Rain at 10:10 was sufficiently hard that we donned our rain jackets. (So that explains the headline, you see*.)  Actually, this was a blessing in disguise, as the wind was making us both cold and our rain jackets protected us, so we kept them on all day, even when it wasn’t raining (which was most of it, fortunately).

Other points of interest that we passed:

Sunflower fields, in some cases with some plants still in flower

and in others giving passers-by the opportunity to have some fun with the seed heads.

We knew that the track would eventually go uphill towards a town called Ciriñuela. It wasn’t immediately clear whether this would be the left or right of two possible tracks,

But it soon became clear that it would be the left one, which was a long ascent – not too steep, but enough to raise the pulse somewhat.

Notice, also, a distinct shift in the agriculture, as the main crop changes from grapes to wheat.

Ciriñuela is a weird place.  On its outskirts is a mass of newly built houses,

with very little sign of life.  There is still building under way.

The centre of it all appears to be the Alta Rioja Golf Course

whose catering team need to change their marketing agency.

 

When you do get to the old town,

there’s not a lot of it left as, according to one book Jane has read, much of the original building has been pillaged by the neighbouring towns.

The place is not without interest (apart from Bar Jacobeo which provided us with coffee). There are some interesting Camino markings and other statuary,

and, on the road out of the town, hops – not something we have seen anywhere else so far.

The road wound on after Ciriñuela

and eventually we could see our destination – Santo Domingo de la Calzada.

The former of these two photos shows that the town has a considerable industrial presence, presumably to deal with all that wheat, and the Camino winds past all of this, including this inexplicable vignette.

One wonders about the owners of this: what are their Crate Expectations?

Thank you. Thank you, again, for listening to my joke.

We found yet another Camino decoration in Santo Domingo

and then we were into its old town

which we passed through to get to our hotel on its outskirts.

It was originally the town’s water mill and is officially a Hostal, so not the height of luxury, but our room is comfortable enough and they serve an early breakfast, which could be material for tomorrow’s plans (see later).

We had set off at 0800 and we arrived at 1330, having covered 21.6km (22km including the detour to Bar Jacobeo). This brings our total to 216.1km, which is a smidge over 134 miles. We have covered more than a quarter of the total Camino distance, then!

Our arrival nicely chimed, once again, with Spanish restaurateurs’ opening hours hereabouts, and so we were able to go for a Nice Lunch, which we took at Los Caballeros.  Its name had been bandied about in the Spanish gabble between Jane and the lady who manages the hostal, and I thought they’d been discussing the location of the gents’ loo on my behalf.  I was wrong. Los Caballeros is a very good restaurant and they sorted out a very fine lunch for us.

Afterwards, once again to shake it down, we went for a walk. Obviously.

The town is named for its founder, Dominic de la Calzada, who was something of a country bumpkin and who was rejected for the priesthood by his peers.  Undeterred, he built a bridge, hospital, and hotel here for pilgrims on the Camino Francés. He began construction of the town’s Cathedral, is buried within and it is dedicated to him. So, clearly we had to visit the cathedral.

Which is massive. I mean, just look at the portal, for God’s sake!

Inside, there is the usual churchy bit

and several large, detailed and opulent pieces of statuary, altarwork and other woodwork. What particularly appealed to me was the selection of modern-style stained glass.

The cathedral is also the site of the miracle of the “hanged innocent”, a pilgrim wrongly accused of theft. The witnesses for his successful appeal, a pair of beheaded, supposedly cooked chickens who miraculously came to life, are represented by their descendants, a pair of whom are kept at all times in the choir loft of the cathedral.

There are cloisters

and the tomb of the saint himself can be found in the cathedral.

The cathedral has a separate bell tower

which one can climb, if one wants to deal with 134 quite chunky steps. This gets you up close and personal with, erm, the bells

and gives you a nice view over the roofs of the town.

On our walkabout, we also visited the Santo Domingo bridge,

started in the 11th Century by the man himself, and variously altered in many ways since – the middle section dates from the 18th Century, for example. To finish the walk, we headed back to the hostal via what remains of the old city walls,

and that was it for the day.

Tomorrow features a walk that is longer again than today’s – some 23km. The weather conditions are likely to be similar to today’s, possibly wetter – in any case the moisture we will have to deal with will be rain, not sweat.  Since the hostal offers an early breakfast, we might be able to get on the road promptly and get to our destination, Belorado, in time once again for a Nice Lunch.

Let’s hope so.

 

* The headline is a laboured joke. “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” was the name of an American children’s TV series from the 1950s about a boy and his German Shepherd dog. Originally, (I now learn), Rin Tin Tin was actually a famous German Shepherd dog used in silent films.

 

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

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

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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.