Day 7: Estella a Torres del Rio

Just as we were about to leave this morning, we heard a bell clanging outside the albergue door and a group of singers, with 4 guitars and an accordian launched into song at 6 a.m. It was hilarious! Thank God we were up, otherwise we would have been like the other people out on their balconies in their pjs, wondering what the hell was going on! It was the feast of Santiago during the week, and it was being celebrated as it was Sunday, so this group was going through the streets stopping every couple of hundred metres to sing a verse of their hymn. We could hear them all the way up out of the city. We soon came to the famous wine font, but it was only about twenty past 6 and when I went over to try it out, nothing happened. Apparently, it only works from 8 to 8. Might have been just as well :) It was a hard day today, and it was Maura´s turn for the meltdown. It was ridiculously hot and we had a long trek through about 15 kilometers of farmland; no villages, no trees, no fuentes (places to fill up on water) or no shade. We were just looking at the winding road ahead and the stacks of hay bails and the fields of squat little olive trees. We met a guy who was doing the Camino to mark his 50th birthday. He started talking to us about reasons why we are here - a lot of people ask that. That didn´t help Maura´s mood as she, like me three days in, was questioning herself - what exactly WERE we doing here?! A long, long, long while later, we hit the town - Los Arcos. But it was horrible. It looked a bit like the set of a dodgy western. We had lunch there anyway, we had packed the chorizo and the pan, the nectarines and the apples so we were happy enough but we decided to continue on. But we left at the worst time of day and we were actually delirious with the heat by the time we hit the next town. The town after that, Torres del Rio was supposedly only 1km away but we were knackered, and I had a serious heat rash going on on the back of my legs - I didn´t know if it was that or if I had actually burned and it was blistering (lovely, I know but it turns out it was just a heat rash). So we stopped there, in Sansol, in the manliest bar I think I have ever been in. But old-Spanish-man manly. You could imagine all the Señores in there, playing cards at the little square tables and drinking away. Anyway, it was run by a guy who seemed to be half twisted himself, but told us that Torres was only 5 mins away. We decided to head on, stretched ourselves, but more cream on (because we weren´t sure we could trust the word of this bartender), put on a big show of getting ready and it turns out it really was 5 minutes away. Down the hill and across the road.