Day 11: Villafranca de Montes de Oca - Cardeñuela Riopico

We started the day with the ascent to the three peaks of San Juan. We honestly only noticed two of them, but supposedly three is their number. It was a beautiful change to the green fields routine.



We walked most of this stage in woodlands. Although the scenery was nice, there was a big problem with this stage:


Do you see that path? A bit soggy, but good enough, right? No, absolutely not. In this path, every footstep was a gamble: will I get my foot covered in mud? That's right folks, slightly paraphrasing - we've been to "mud heaven" and back. It was at least 1-2km of not knowing the best place to step on! A little nerve wracking.. But the mud didn't last forever. After descending to San Juan the trees were gone and the wind they had been sheltering us from was back, and sometimes even stronger than yesterday's.


In Agés we bought just-made chapata bread and a few slices of "mortadela".. Wonderful.



A few kms afterwards, having passed Atapuerca, we came to a bifurcation of the Camino: two options to choose from, both waymarked, one that entered a military field and other that followed the outside of its fence, no directions to either side. We took the one through the military field as we knew there would be an off route left turn to the next albergue, so maybe this would be it. But 500m into the field we started hearing gunshots not far ahead.. So we traced back our steps and went the other way; a few kms in that track and we found our way to the albergue in Cardeñuela.






Last mishap of the day, after taking a nap at the albergue we realized we had no money left to buy us dinner. We counted the change left in our wallet: 1,94€. Next ATM was in Burgos, 15km ahead. We decided we would go to the bar next door, explain the situation and try to buy there some bread to eat. Fortunately, when I was getting the 1€ to pay for the bread I found a 5€ bill in our wallet that somehow I had missed before! The man at the bar gave us a little discount on the tortilla: half a tortilla, bread and one large bottle of water and we dined for exactly 5€! Still got 1,94€ in our wallet.

Day 10: Grañón - Villafranca Montes de Oca

Today was a very hard day. The most hard yet, I would say. We faced winds of nearly 90km/h coming straight ahead at us, making feel like we were being pulled back all the time. We walked about 27km, but it sure felt like 35km. Plus there were some personal mishaps that kind of pulled us back psychologically as well.. It was a very hard day indeed.

So excuse me if I felt that all my strengths should be put into use to surpass this day, that I think it was really a metaphor for all that goes wrong in our lives, and didn't take as many photos as I would have wanted to.



By the way, remember the man-made caves we talked about yesterday, as we were leaving Nájera? We found some more on the way today, as well as some buildings built as part of those rocky walls.



As pilgrims, nothing feels so good after a hard day as a hot shower and a warm place to dry your clothes on!

Day 9: Nájera - Grañón

At the beginning of our day it seemed we were in a western, surrounded by miniature red canyons. In the highest walls, man-made caves dated to many centuries ago crowned Nájera. Unfortunately it was still to dark at that hour to capture it in a photo. As the day went by we crossed kilometres of non-stop vineyards. No doubt we were in wine country.



The weather was fine all day, it made for a good walk. We crossed Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where we looked for the chicken coop next to the cathedral, symbolizing the Miracle of the Cock (to summarize it, a roast chicken stood up and singed in order to establish a man's innocence, cool story), but we couldn't find it.


Next we got to Grañón, right in time to escape the first raindrops of the day. We had seen in Nájera some advertisement to a new albergue and decided to look it up. At the entrance we saw "WI-FI" and we were convinced. But nothing could have prepared for what we discovered inside..







We had discovered a little gem of the Camino. An albergue made for pilgrims and built by pilgrims. To sum it up, Ernesto has bought the place with all he had, an old house with not much to show for. Then he called it Casa de las Sonrisas and opened its doors to anyone. Seriously, anyone can stay and give as much as he can (it's based on donations), knowing that there'll always be a bed and food on the table. If you wanna stay more than a day, all it is asked is that you help out where you can: building furniture, painting the walls, etc. And everyone can join in where it comes to the decoration.. As someone else said, it's like sleeping in a art gallery.

Looks a little messy at first, but words and photos can't make you experience the energy of that place. And like I said, there's always food on the table: our communal dinner was not so communal after all because the hospitaleros had lunched pretty late, so basically they made food for us two! It sounds as awkward and uncomfortable has it was for us to find out that we would be eating their food on our own, but it showed us the true Camino hospitality..



PS: we had bought some Rioja wine to share over dinner, so we had just a taste and left the rest for them to enjoy later on. And let me tell you.. That was great wine!

Day 8: Logroño - Nájera

Today we had 30km ahead of us, so we left the albergue at 07:45. The sun hadn't rose yet, but Logroño was already very much alive at that early hour. On the outskirts of Logroño there is an awesome park around a lake, which housed all kinds of animals: we saw squirrels, ducks and many other waterfowl, birds of prey.. you name it.





The scenery has changed completely. We are now in La Rioja, a small region of Spain famous for its wine production. And it shows! Everywhere we looked today we could see vineyards, some of which were being pruned as we passed.


We made a small detour into Ventosa to get something to eat and ended up paying 8€ for two cañas and stale bread with jamón that they dared to call bocadillos.. Oh well, we can't get it right every time, and yesterday we did have great bocadillos..


At Nájera's municipal albergue we found some morcilla that had been left in the fridge by a local association for the pilgrims and we couldn't pass the opportunity to try some. It was great! It was very different from the Portuguese morcela and the texture was also a bit different from others we had tasted in Spain. Although we didn't ate much, it got us full enough to pass on dinner tonight. Only three other pilgrims at the albergue: two bikers and Bernhard, who caught up with us again.

Day 7: Torres del Río - Logroño

We will always remember today as the day I lost my knickers. Or better said, I misplaced them. Yesterday we followed our daily routine, after arriving at the albergue, we showered and then did the laundry. We placed every item of clothing above the heaters, so that all of it would be dry by the next morning. I remembered that my knickers were the first to dry, I even remembered taking them from the heat.. But this morning I couldn't find them anywhere! Anyway.. Along with the telling of our day: we don't know what the temperature outside was when we left this morning, but surely below 0 degrees Celsius.. Because the ground was frozen. And it remained frozen for at least the next 15km of our day!




We saw a handful of pilgrims today, some of which we got to know nothing about, others with whom we chatted a bit, like the Italian pilgrim who started at Saint Jean the day after we did. On the way we also met a lovely Spanish couple on a morning walk. They told us that they had done the Camino Português a few months before; we talked about the Camino and Portuguese wine (verde branco), which they enjoyed a lot! Before we resumed our walking, they advised us to stay at the municipal albergue at Logroño and not to get lured by the hospitaleros from other albergues.





As soon as we got to Logroño we heard a woman asking if we were looking for a place to stay; "Go to that one over there, it's very nice!". Just as we had been warned.. We enjoyed Logroño. We made a pit stop at a cafe and ate some worderful bocadillos: pork loin with red bell peppers and tortilla with green bell peppers, plus two cañas. Then we sat on a park bench drenched in sunlight until the albergue opened at 15:00. Later we stopped by a cafe for some chocolate con churros (yum!). Finding something open to buy dinner on a Sunday after 18:00 was hard (you had warned us, Fiona!), but we managed.




Back to the albergue, I put my hand inside my fleece pocket and out comes a pair of knickers. Not sure what I've learned from this, but I'll find out eventually.

Day 6: Ayegui - Torres del Río

We woke up to a rainy day. Ponchos over our heads and off we go. Now that I did want to use my camera, I couldn't risk it to get wet. Fortunately, it stopped raining after our lunch break at Los Arcos: the sun shined on the last 5km, drying our clothes and warming our hearths.






We noticed a change in the landscape today: although we can still see some mountains around us, they are becoming more sparse, and the path undulates over small hills. Tonight we're staying at Albergue Maribel. It's a nice Albergue, although we paid 10€ each and not 7€ as we predicted: in winter the heating rises the price.. Oh well, it would have been nice to know that in advance! Torres del Río is a very small village with a beautiful 12th century church. The nicest thing about its small size is that we got to see it pretty quick, 'cause it is freaking cold outside!