Phew ! Our first and probably only 40km today – we’re wacked. We were up and out a little after 6 a.m. and after a quick breakfast of orange juice and coffee at a little bar near the hostel (still open last night at 10 pm – these guys work hard scratching a living), we made our way out of town. It was still dark and difficult to see the Camino signs

(some typical signs that we find on the pavements, on the walls and free standing in the fields)

and we almost immediately lost our way  but were directed in no uncertain terms by a lady walking her dog onto the correct path.  The first couple of km were alongside the main road but at 6:30 in the morning there’s next to no traffic. For the next 15 km through Ventosa to Najera the path took us through a landscape dominated by vines filling every nook and cranny of available soil. We’re clearly still in the rioja region.

We came across a lovely bodega which clearly has a cute marketing guru.

The weather today has been cool and overcast with a promise, not realised, of rain. We’d stopped for coffee and bocadillo jambon in Ventosa, again at a bar overlooking a lake and then again in Najera and it was still only 10:30 so we decided to take advantage of the weather and continue.

Azofra is only 6 km from Najera. It’s a small  town with one main street and an albergue with sixty beds in thirty double rooms. It seemed a good place to stop. The main street is home to two bars; we stopped in the second for the ubiquitous coffee and bocadillo jambon. At this point there were perhaps a dozen people in the street. Suddenly a band struck up in the adjoining street and hundreds of people in their Sunday best with small children and teenagers whirling and swirling in glorious white and red began flooding towards us. They passed in a blur of colour and sound.

It’s the festival of Santiago and clearly that’s not restricted to Galicia.

We could have, probably should have, stopped in the albergue and spent the afternoon watching the children on the bucking torro (in the middle of a bouncy castle – don’t ask) but it was still early so we decided to push on a further 10km to Ciruena. There are a couple of decent albergues in the small town according to the albergue Bible so on we went.

10km of rough track interspersed with tarmac isn’t much fun. The vines stopped and were replaced with wheat fields on which the harvesters were busy at work. The only notable happening was a guy on a large unicycle complete with backpack and scallop shell passing us on a crazily steep downhill. Two lads, typically German (i.e. hale, hearty and irrepressibly cheerful) and (presumably) their lasses passed us, stopped, we passed them etc pretty much all the way today. We left them sleeping in the fields just short of Ciruena.

Ciruena is deeply, deeply dispiriting. Large squat concrete blocks of flats in a post apocalyptic urban landscape isn’t the most inspiring  sight. Not a soul stirred, blinds covered every window, the only movement that of the for sale signs. With spirits suitably chastened, we decided not to stay anywhere in the vicinity but to press on to Santa Domingo, a bustling town of over 8,400 souls. This was despite the fact that our synovial fluid had mysteriously disappeared and it was bone on bone in every joint south of our waists.

The next six km were ‘interesting’ but we arrived, legs and arms moving like ventriloquist’s dummies, checked into the nearest decent hotel and filled the bath to the maximum level commensurate with the water staying in the tub.

As I write we’ve just finished the final course of our typical pilgrims’ menu -tiramisu and decaffeinated coffee. We upgraded the regular rioja to a crianza, ignoring the recent admonitions to avoid alcohol given that it’s directly responsible for at least seven different cancers and we’ve drunk the lot. The Germans have just passed us on their way to find food and lodging – still cheerful 😥

We’re off to bed shortly, perchance to dream, but who cares – we’re knackered.

Buen Camino