Day 13: Agés to Burgos

Started off well- had a nice little climb up to this cross and then there was a bit of a flat plain that looked like Africa. The view down into the valley was spectacular. Stopped for breakfast a while later. Walk into Burgos was long and through a big industrial estate.  Arrived again at municipal hostel. Very purpose built and not a whole lot of character. Burgos cathedral (de Santa Maria) is beautiful. Really spectacular.

Day 12: Belorado to Agés

Stopped in Tosantos for breakfast. No bar but the hospitaleros gave us coffee and bread. Sonia had stayed there before. A guy called Juan Luis Anton was running it. Lovely atmosphere there. Very peaceful. Very slow morning. Stopped a lot but it was good. Walked with the English son, mother and daughter. The mother is 65... Unreal. Lots of forest. Passed through San Juan de Ortega - literally means St. John of the Nettle. There was just a monastery there. Went onto Ages. Lovely little town. Pizza. El tocador. Dinner. Met the Americans. Pint outside. 92 year old woman came over to talk to us. Two Africans appeared in the bar. Bed.

Day 11: Santa Domingo to Belorado

Santa domingo to belorado

"Llora como una mujer que no spite defender como un hombre."
We were walking with the guy from Madrid again. History lesson about the Moors in Spain. Singing Irish songs. Long stretch by the road. Stayed at a place with a pool. So had lovely evening lazying about sunbathing and swimming. Had dinner with the two and Daniela from Ecuador.

Day 10: Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada

Najera to santo domingo

Walked with Sonia for the morning. Lovely sunrise over the mountains. We are most definitely in La Rioja. There are fields and fields of grape vines everywhere. Coffee break was at a little village and then it was maura and myself again. Passed a good 10k. Found Sonia again. Got the Catalan point of view on the Basque situation. Arrived in Santo Domino. He was apparently responsible for building and maintaining a lot of the Camino paths. Went for food. Supermarket. Sun bathing. An Italian we met in the last place had carried a bottle of stuff that we had tried to throw away all the way from Najera. Very funny.Cooked dinner. Found best chocolate ever- Dulce de leche stuff. Bed.

Day 9: Logroño to Najera

Long stage again today. About 30km. Set off early but got a little bit lost coming out of the city and then I wasted a lot of our time looking for a bathroom when we came out of the city and into one of the amenity parks... Anyway, we got over it and we were in good form. It felt like we were getting into it today. We decided a few days ago to turn off all the phones and watches because we used to be trying to time our breaks, or try and calculate how fast we were travelling. After what felt like a good few kms in we saw a village and we decided to stop for coffee but the next thing, the yellow arrows - that we are following all through the Camino, pointed a different so we followed on, as per usual and ages later arrived at a very similar looking village to the one that had seemed very close earlier. One of our Spanish buddies informed us that yes, it was the same village and the Camino, just for fun, had taken us an extra 4kms out of our way to get there. But in our now Zen-like state, we accepted this fact and with our feet burning, we went in to get a coke. We walked on after our pitstop with the Spanaird, and got the complete history of Spain, Franco and the Basque country (from the point of view of a Madrileño - person who lives in Madrid) for about 10 km and it was really interesting because up to this point, we had been walking through the Basque Country (which is a region in Spain that wants to be independent and they had their own type of IRA called ETA but there is now a ceasefire) and had seen all the flags, and the banners written in Euskera and the graffiti on the pilgrim path with "Freedom for the Basque" and "Pilgrim (bit Wild West, like), You are in the Basque Country." It is still quite polemic here, I didn´t really that it was still so contraversial. But then, Franco only died in the 70s and before that they had a dictatorship for 40 years... Very interesting. We took a little break then and the last 2km into the city were AWFUL. I seriously thought we were getting sunstroke! I was there with my cap on, and a scarf draped over it and Maura was going around with my fleece draped over her - just anything to avoid our skin being touched by the sun!! Made it eventually...drunk on sunshine...

Day 8: Torres del Rio to Logroño

We actually managed to get our hands on some toast this morning with the coffee before heading out. Toast! Imagine. It is the small things that make you happy on this trip. It was quite a pleasant walk today and short, so we got into Logroño at about 12. We stayed with the padres in the Parrochial house and we were lucky we got there early as they only had 23 beds and the others that came after had to sleep Japanese style on little mattresses on the ground. There is a famous street for tapas in Logroño so we headed out there with a couple of others and we had a great afternoon, popping around from tapas bar to tapas bar. You eat one, have a little beer (called a "corto" which is about half a half pint) and move on to the next place. It was nice to get some proper Spanishy type food other than the peregrino meals. We had good craic and balmed out in the square then with a few more. I went and got my Spanish phone fixed then and it was dinner back with the padres at half 8. There was about 35 of us, all together and it was really lovely. Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, German, English, whatever. You name it, we had it. After dinner then we went down to the church and had evening prayer. There were leaflets in a couple of different languages and Maura and I took the Spanish one, just so we could follow along, as we presumed it would all be in Spanish. As it turns out, each part of the prayers would be said in a different language and I don´t know what it was but in the middle of it I just started welling up a bit... I don´t know what happened me... Thinking about the reasons, the different people in my life, the distance, us all on this together, being in the church at that hour, empty and so peaceful... I wasn´t expecting that...

Anyway, bit of drama later on that evening with people not turning off the light early enough (people need their sleep on this thing!!) but it was grand and the padres had the breakfast all laid out for us the next morning again at 5.

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.