We very nearly headed back to Pamplona this morning en route for the uk to check Bob out but seeing as you all appear to have things in hand we’ll continue our little trek. Muchas gracias.

We arrived in our albergue, a sister albergue to last night’s, a little after one o’clock. For some reason the room we had been in last night was composed of somewhat lazy English speakers and pretty much none of us managed to get out of the albergue until a little after 7 o’clock, by which point the 40+ others would have been well on their way.

The first 6km took us uphill to a long ridge with dozens off spinning windmills. The attached photo shows the metal sculpture of pilgrims en route to Santiago De Compostela, only some 700km away after the exertions of the last four days.

The path down was fairly tricky, steep and full of large pebbles, clearly a river bed in a past life. We’d passed and chatted to a lovely lady from Edinburgh who was walking the Camino with her daughter. She’d recently had two hip replacements but was determined to get to Santiago. Her daughter was accompanying her for the first couple of weeks but the last three she’d manage on her own. Not sure how she managed the path down from the ridge. I did wonder about going back up to give her a hand with her backpack but I’ve been a little more reserved after being told off by mum for pushing a struggling middle aged lady up the hill outside of Noke with my hand on her back whilst cycling – we’ve all done it surely.

This albergue is very pleasant – we’ve got a double room all to ourselves 😊. The usual suspects are also here. On the walk everyone spreads out before coming back together again at the albergue. It makes for peaceful walking but pleasant conversation once the walking is over.

Dinner was a pilgrims meal in a local bar – three courses plus bread and a glass of wine for the usual €10 – really tasty after a single jambon sandwich and a banana all day.

Tomorrow should be a long day – we’re hoping to cover a little over 33km but the temperature is set to stay at 36° so we’ll see how it goes.

Buen Camino