It’s been a short 21.6 km from Puente la Reina through fields of corn, sunflowers

and lately vines.

We’re entering the Rioja region shortly where pretty much every available plot of land is devoted to vines.

We were up at 6 am, grabbed a decent breakfast (included in the price of the room) and left at 7 on the dot.

We had popped out to do some more touristic things last night before grabbing dinner and I managed to get this longer distance image of our first stork nest.

Alistair also took this of Dorothy and myself alongside the famous bridge, attributed locally to the Romans.

I’ve documented the route to Estella before on this blog so I’ll keep this post short.

The most interesting feature of this route are the hundreds of ant trails taking small heads of corn from one side of the path to the other.

Also criss crossing the path are dozens of slugs and snails, while zig zagging above them are the most gorgeously coloured butterflies.

We also came across this little chap

It’s been a hot day and the temperature has increased inexorably from 17 degrees when we left this morning to 33 degrees now. We managed to get to our apartment whilst the temperature was still on the correct side of 30 but even so, it proved to be a long slog after stopping for lunch in Cirauqui – impressively positioned on top of a hill.

Dorothy and I are currently pleasantly ensconced in an open air bar alongside the river Ega that runs through Estella. We’re waiting for Alistair and Rachel to return from their reconnaissance of the town and hopefully with a completed credencial from one or other of the local churches. Ah, just over Dorothy’s left shoulder appeared …

It’s not a good image but you get the gist.

The apartment is excellent, we’ll get dinner shortly and an early night. We’ve elected to walk to Torres del Río tomorrow morning, some 28.1 km from Estella. The usual stopping point is Los Arcos, a distance of only 21.3 km but the Albergue in Torres del Río has a swimming pool, excellent food and light and airy private rooms. It’s 6.8 km further from Los Arcos which means it’s 6.8 km closer to Logroño where Alistair and Rachel leave us. With the temperature expected to reach 36 degrees tomorrow but 38 degrees on Wednesday we’ll try to leave around 5:30 am and we’ll make sure to get to Torres del Río well before the heat peaks at 4 o’clock. Should be fun.

Buen camino