Tag Archives: Travel

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.

It’s Day 5. What have we learned so far?

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Sunday 20 August 2023 – One thing has become abundantly clear over the last few days: it’s just as well I previously set your expectations here, because there is no way that I could seriously contemplate creating an entry in these pages for each day of our peregrination. That’s not to say that there isn’t a story for each day; there is. But attempting to write up a Camino faces two serious hurdles: lack of time; and lack of energy.

Lack of time. We have walked in excess of 20km each day so far. Day 1 (25.3km) was particuarly brutal and I have regaled you with its story already. On each of the following days until today we haven’t arrived at our destination before about 3pm, and in some cases much later than that. Once stretched, showered, changed, rested and got back after finding something to eat, it has simply been time to get to bed in order to have enough sleep.  What I have been able to do is to use the Relive application to give an overview of each day, together with some of the photos I took:

That’s a smidge over 71 miles in Imperial money, by the way.

Lack of energy. Basically, by the time we arrive at our destination, we are knackered. Day 1 was particularly tough, but each day has had its challenges.  Day 2 involved a really tedious and lengthy descent on a horrid rocky 3km stretch; Days 3 – 5, whilst not being as challenging as Day 1 (there may be one other day on the Camino that’s that tough, or maybe even not), have been completed in stinging heat – temperatures of 35°C and higher. Whilst I have been pleasantly surprised at my ability to keep going – even uphill! – at these temperatures, that doesn’t mean it didn’t take a lot out of me.  So, frankly, seeking refreshment and rest were about all I could cope with. Much as I enjoy writing these pages, there are limits, you understand.

What my editor wife and I have decided to do is to use these pages to present the sidelights and items that have interested us or struck us as being noteworthy as we go along.  Every day brings greater understanding of the subtleties and patterns of existence that Doing The Camino involves.

The main settling-in to the rhythms of the Camino has been trying to work out a routine and a schedule that allows for enough to eat, the right things to carry with us, time to get to the destination and – particularly relevant from day 3 onwards – how to deal with the heat, which becomes punishing after about midday,

I have weather envy.

It is traditional for people on holiday to have better weather than people at home.  For us,

it’s rather the other way around.

Our starts have been getting earlier and earlier as the full horror of dealing with the heat is borne in on us. It is traditional, when we’re away from home, to reflect ruefully that we only get up early when we’re travelling; but here, we’ve had 0530 alarms to get us up and out of the hotel by 0700 to give us a chance of getting most of the walk done before the cooling breezes become hot blasts, typically some time between midday and 1pm.  Hence, this morning, we had a typical scenario as the sun cleared the horizon behind us.

Food. Another challenge is simply eating.  I admit that we have a slightly unusual dining schedule, if we have our druthers: we like a late breakfast – like, perhaps, midday – and a (very) late lunch as our two meals of the day. We also like to eat a lot of vegetables because when you get to our age you need ’em.

This pattern is a bit tricky to engineer anywhere in Spain, where lunch is served until 2pm and dinner doesn’t start until 7 or 7.30pm; it is an utter impossibility on the Camino. I really don’t want to eat dinner at 7.30pm when I ought to be in bed and asleep by 9.30pm. At the other end of the day, when we want to be on the road before 7, many of the hotels don’t start serving breakfast until 7.30.  A couple of kind hotel managers have prepared us a takeaway grab bag – yoghurt, fruit, maybe a sandwich – which has been very kind of them, but we haven’t had a cup of Twining’s finest Earl Grey for days now!

There is a way round the evening meal – tapas, or, as it’s called in Basque country, pintxos. One can get delicous tortillas, creations around chorizo sausage, croquettes of all sorts and many other tasty morsels. We got some lovey examples at this slightly mad bar in Pamplona (I mean – look at that celiling!).

The downside of this approach is that, dietetically speaking, it’s a disaster area, particularly if it’s something that is going to carry on for a month and a half. We haven’t quite cracked this aspect of the Camino yet, but we’re working on it. We thought we might have a decent chance of a more balanced meal here in Estella; a friend recommended a place called Namaste, which serves salads and that. It closed just as we arrived, still hot, sweaty and in need of a shower, so we’ll have to look for something else. The hotel we’re in, the luxurious (air-conditioned!) Hospederia Chapitel, features a bar which is open all the time, so we have an emergency plan right there.

Health is an obvious concern, particularly of the feet; but other bits of the body have their say, as well.  At the end of day 1 I reported that my knees were not up to the task of allowing me painlessly to take suitcases up two flights of stairs. I’m glad to report that that problem appears for the moment to have gone away, despite the poor things having to deal with 90 more km of slogging up and down Spanish hills. I’ve had a couple of other niggles but nothing too serious, and Jane’s been fine.

The feet, though. We’re both now in a situation where part of the morning routine is the ritual Binding Of The Feet. The brutal descent into Zubiri has inflicted damage to a couple of Jane’s toes, so she is wearing (please forgive her) sandals with socks.  I am also trying to wear sandals (Tevas, proper walking sandals), but needed to take a bit more care than I already have, so need to attach bits of microporous tape to stop things getting worse.  I might also have to wear socks, though if I do, I’ll pair them with walking shoes. There are limits, you know.

Another of the challenges that come with the Camino is that of sightseeing. It seems senseless to visit all the various places we pass through without going and having a look around. (The exception was Zubiri, which is basically an industrial town where we decided not to even consider walking round, but instead cosumed nuts and raisins in our hotel room and a state of exhaustion.

However, one simply shouldn’t visit Pamplona, billed as the most beautiful city in Navarra, without taking a look around; and there are a few Things That Must Be Gawped At, so we made a bit of an effort (eased by being in a comfortable hotel, with air con). And it is a fine place.

Our hotel was near the main square, which has cloisters round each side

and is, of course, home to the famous Cafe Iruña, where Ernest Hemingway used to spend time,

We looked inside.  Google described it as “not too busy”. You decide….


The cathedral is of simply staggering size and sumptuous appointment;

the Town Hall has a wonderful façade

and, of course, there is the bull ring

and a statue dedicated to what Pamplona is probably most famous for – the Running of the Bulls.

It’s not the only place they do this, by the way.  Puente la Reina also hosts this somewhat bizarre ritual; you can tell by the way that they can block off streets with gates so that the bulls stay on the main drag where they, erm, belong.

We wandered around Puente La Reina, and it’s a very charming place, with a sumptous cathedral,

and a striking Roman bridge

which was being used as the backdrop for a jazz festival

which we completely failed to visit because we wanted to get up early the next day. The bridge offers a striking overview of the town.

But it has to be said that sightseeing is a challenge to fit in with the rhythms of the Camino, the weather, the need for sustenance and our energy levels.

There have been several nice little vignettes:

  • Outside Espinal, a chap was doing some exercises beside a tree and hailing all passers-by who looked a little pilgrimish, asking them where they came from and so forth. He was actually the cook at the second coffee bar along the route and wanted to make sure that we knew where to go, even showing us the landmarks on the iPad that he magicked up from somewhere.
  • Arrival at our hotel in Pamplona, the Sercotel Europa, was great for several reasons. Firstly, it was air-conditioned. Secondly, the room had a kettle and a fridge. The receptionist, Jusone, was wonderful, fixing up a jug of milk so we could have tea and also fixing up a take-away breakfast so we could leave early.
  • As we walked through Pamplona’s outskirts, a lot of folk (normal local residents) wished us “buen Camino”, showing that they welcomed the throughput of tired, largely foreign, visitors.
  • Our reception at our hotel, El Cerco, in Puente la Reina, was lovely. The manager saw what state we were in and immediately went off into his kitchen to come back with two glasses of lovely cool, fresh lemonade.
  • We hardly see swallows as we go about in England, so it’s a delight to find a profusion of them here, such as around the eaves of the church in Lorca.
  • The hotel we stayed at in Zubiri was 2-star, but very well organised, and we had a comfortable night. We had read reviews (and overheard a couple of comments) which complained about the loud church bells interfering with sleep, but were clearly so knackered that we didn’t hear a thing.
  • The breakfast room in Zubiri had some interesting puppets hanging from the ceiling.
  • We left Zubiri and walked through woodland, which was quite dark, as we were early. It seemed a little spooky, and, at the far end, we saw that early Christians in the area had decided that the women who lived in the woods and helped with healing people’s ills were witches, and erected a cross to ward off their evil. Idiots.

Zubiri is indeed an industrial town, with its landscape (and presumably economy_ dominated by a company, Magna, who process and deal in manganese.  It gave an opportunity to support a philosophical point made recently in Amateur Photographer Magazine, that much of landscape photography is fundamentally dishonest. I took a photo of a village as we left Zubiri.

It looks pleasant enough. But – here’s the full landscape.

That vilage is, we think, a special construction for workers at Magna’s plant, and is a tiny part of a landscape which includes slag heaps and some kind of fluid reservoir.

Views. We have had some wonderful scenery (once the fog had lifted); lovely to look at, but not necessarily photogenic. For example.

However, there have been some spectacular views, too. Particularly impressive, for me, was the view from the top of Alto del Perdón, as we headed down to Puente La Reina. I published a photo on various social media sites:

but the whole view was simply stupendous.

There have been some annoyances, principally noise pollution in the form of a couple of Americans who believe that your idea of a good time consists of listening to them rhapsodise about how fantastic they are – loudly and with a complete lack of concern for the people around them.  One of them even carries a loudspeaker with him which he used to regale us with 100dB of fucking Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer at about 0830 on a Sunday morning whilst all surrounding him were quietly trying to make their way down a tricky bit of slope. I have nothing against Bon Jovi, but there’s a time and a place, and This Wasn’t It. The lack of self-awareness or cultural sensitivity is enraging. I also got somewhat exercised on day 3 with a couple from, I think, Korea, who seemed to be unable to go more than 100 metres without taking a selfie, That’s a personal niggle – they weren’t upsetting anyone else and we haven’t seen them since, anyway.

Generally speaking, it seems that by and large we prefer our own quiet company, rather than seeking to engage overmuch with the other peregrinos.  We’ve had some pleasant encounters and helped people a couple of times, but I think being a couple insulates us somewhat from the social vibe. It’ll be interesting to see the extent to which that changes in the next six weeks or so.

Anyhoo…

One final Thing I Have Learned.  I know that what we’re walking is The Way of St. James. I know it ends in Santiago de Compostela. And I know about the shell, the traditional emblem of St James, that is used as the Camino symbol. The shell is that of the scallop, or coquille st jacques. Jacques is the french equivalent of James, and Jacob is another equivalent, and a further equivalent of Jacob is Iago. Hence Santiago. Sorry if you thought this is obvious, but it’s taken me a while to connect these various dots.

I think this brings you up to date with the highlights so far – five days in to a 40-day hike over 45 days.

I’m looking forward to our rest day in Logroño (about 4 days away). The hotel has a laundry. The forecast temperature is 41°C.

Stay in touch with these pages and I’ll try to show you the other interesting bits beyond the photos on each day’s walk.

Camino Day 1 – Would Have Been Better If It Were Clearer

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Wednesday 16 August 2023 – My 71st birthday, by God, and what’s my present? Probably the toughest day of the whole Camino Francès!

This was a long day, and this is a long post.  Here’s the tl;dr version if you’d prefer to go out instead.

 

For the rest of you, here’s how the day went.

Because of the likelihood of having to do lots of tough uphill work in blistering heat, we wanted to leave the hotel as early as we could, an ambition somewhat thwarted when we couldn’t find the hotel room key to return it as we left. Much swearing and checking through bags ensued before we decided to confess our sin to the manager and hope we might be forgiven.  Turns out that we’d left the key in the outside of the door last night, so he carefully removed it and took it downstairs.

Didn’t tell us, though, did he?

Anyway, the hotel breakfast was pretty good

but you might be able to make out that the distant hills were shrouded in mist. We left our bags to be transferred to our destination (in reception every morning by 8am is the rule) and started out.  The town’s streets were eerily quiet after yesterday’s Assumption Day crowds

and we made our way to the Notre Dame gate for the obligatory “This is us starting off” selfie – one of the very few occasions when I will countenance such self-indulgence.

Off we went along the roads

and it became clear that the mist wasn’t about to disappear.  You’ll have read yesterday’s blog so you’ll know that I have been basically bricking it about this day’s walk and particularly the tough climb to the first and, as it turned out, only refreshment stop at Orisson as part of a long and largely uphill journey to our destination, Roncesvalles (Ronceveaux in French).

The serious uphill started pretty soon

but the blistering hot sunshine I’d feared never materialised, as it was very misty.

There were a few peregrinos out

many of whom overtook us as we started, making me feel like I do out on a bike ride when I get overtaken, which is not an uncommon occurence.  However – hah! – when the uphill going got tough, they all seemed to find lots of excuses to stop and chat and adjust things, so we overtook them in turn.  Not that it’s a race. No. Not at all.

The first few kilometres were a steady uphill pull, but then the road steepened and it became really brutally steep, particularly as we left the road for a track.

It reminded me of the gradient I had to deal with on one occasion during a walking holiday in Slovenia in 2016. Then, I had to cope with 40 minutes up such a relentless gradient, and it nearly did for me. So I was delighted to find that, seven years older, but lighter and much fitter, I could cope with the gradient for well over an hour without my heartbeat going particularly high and, more to the point, without finding it at all daunting. This is a major change for me; it used to be normal for me to really hate having to walk uphill.

This is going to make all the difference to this Camino for me.

Mind you, we were lucky with the weather.  The mist made photography a bit challenging, since only rarely could one see anything through the mist;

but on the other hand it was cool, which made walking uphill much easier.

The day was rather like Walker Family holidays over the years, only more so.  The traditional Walker cry is “It would have been better if it were clearer”. In this case, it might have been better if we could see something.

Anyhoo…

After about two and a half hours we arrived at Orisson

which gave us a rest as we had coffee and sandwiches.  Ordinarily, the view from the panoramic terrace is a thing of beauty.  Today?

Not so much.

After our refreshment break we walked on and the mists cleared for a bit,

then didn’t,

then sort of did, a bit.

We passed a strange-looking cairn

and then the road split.  There was a choice – go downhill or go uphill. Guess which was the correct option? Correct – uphill we went

to the Orisson statue of the Virgin Mary,

where once again the ability to see the view was a transient thing.

All around us in the mist was the tinkling of bells, indicating that there was a lot of livestock somewhere around.

We reached Thibault’s Cross,

where our info asserted that a food truck operated “in the season”. Today, not. Just as well we weren’t depending on it, then.

After the cross, we once again left the road for tracks

This is not a stile I would care to use, personally

and arrived at the Spanish border.

Just beside it is Roland’s Fountain

(Roland was the Frankish military leader at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in AD 778, by the way).

We carried on into Spain

past an emergency refuge hut

where one could spend the night in extremis – water is provided, and there’s a fireplace and a place to put your sleeping bag.

On we climbed, and, as we did, the mists started to fall away. As we got to the highest point, it was absolutely clear sunshine.

I decided to try to get some aerial photography – video of reaching the top and climbing to pan round to the fabulous view was my plan; I’d even practised it at home.  So I got out the drone that I’d carefully and specifically brought along for this very occasion and whizzed it up.

There was a frisson at one point when a lorry wanted to drive down the path I was standing on, but we carried on – and the clouds came in again so that view was no longer visible.

Rats!

However, nothing can be done about the weather, so we started down again.

We were above our destination, Roncesvalles, at this point and had a choice of route to get down: the road – less steep but more boring

or the track you see going ahead in this picture – steeper (much steeper, as it turned out) but more wooded and therefore protected from the sun. After some dithering, we took the track, which wound relentlessly and quite steeply downhill

for what seemed like ages, but can’t have been because its total distance was less than 4km.  Eventually it levelled out a bit into lovely beech woodland

which is quite similar to what we’ve seen above the Tillingbourne River on our Surrey walks.

Eventually, we walked sufficiently far down that the mists closed in again.

It seemed to take forever to get down, and we were both feeling that we’d really just like to be there now, thank you very much.  Eventually, we reached civilisation

and walked into a very misty Roncesvalles

Memorial to the Battle of Ronesvalles Pass, apparently

and (eventually) found our hotel, arriving at about 5.30pm, nine and a half hours after we’d left SJPdP.

It became immediately apparent that we’d moved from the ridiculous to the sublime. Inside was very swish,

but actually we didn’t care that much because we were very tired and what we really wanted was a drink. We had a huge room with three beds and a separate lounge area and, importantly, facilities for making tea. Its drawback was that it was on the second floor, and I discovered, when I tried to be a hero and bring both suitcases up all those stairs, that my knees were buggered. It’s happened before after a long walk, but I’d thought that the hundreds of miles we’d walked in prep for this outing might have sorted the problem. But there it was; walking up stairs hurt.

In the end, by the time we’d tidied ourselves up, what we did was to go for a dinner in the hotel, which was a decent meal. I particularly liked the large gins that went with it, I must say.

And that was pretty much it for the day.

The all-important stats (using Relive for the distance and Garmin for the ascent metrics):

Distance walked: 25.3km
Ascent: 1,428m
Descent:  641m
Max elevation: 1,425m

There was no time (or, more accurately, not enough energy) to write things up for these pages, so we basically headed for bed to try to recover in time to do something not dissimilar the next day – fewer kilometres to walk and many fewer vertical metres to ascend (but still some).

I will write about Day 2 at some stage, possibly rolling it into a narrative over several days. Who knows? The only way for you to find out is to keep in touch with these pages, isn’t it?