wine – My Long Walk 2019

Most of the time on Camino is spent walking, or resting. In fact the only other things that really matter are food and water. Everything else, as they say, the Camino provides!

This means that a great deal of time is spent deciding where to stay, how far to walk, where to grab a coffee or breakfast, lunch, water and sellos of course.

The route pretty much takes care of itself, unless you are brave enough to venture ‘off piste’ to one of the many wonderfully described ‘must see’ guidebook detours. Most of these add considerably more to your daily distance than the 5km I did to Eunate a few days ago. So, you know where you are going but how many kilometres to walk? Municipal albergue, private albergue or hotel?- it is pretty complicated believe me. Pretty much the first questions a peregrino asks another when they meet in the albergue are … Where are you from? Where have you come from today? How many kilometres is that? How are your feet?

The obsession with deciding where to stay is all encompassing, but I have already realised that the hype about not being able to find a bed is just that – hype! As I write this, a group of 4 have come into the albergue at 1715 and they have plenty of beds left. Some of the tiny albergues may be full of course. But choosing the place for me is decided, firstly by the distance I want to walk, then by the size of the albergues in the destination. I have gone with a mixture of pre-booked places but with some non-reservas where a particular albergue attracted me.

Most albergues offer dormitory-style accommodation in bunk beds, it appears to be popular to have these in blocks of 4. Today, in Logroño, my dorm has about 24 beds in the room. Not too bad, and nothing compared to the mega-dorm at Roncesvalles with 100 or so in our room! Most also have handful of showers and some sort of laundry facilities. The great advantage of the combination of modern textiles and the spanish sun makes drying clothes very easy!

So far I have stayed in the following : Bayonne hotel; St Jean Pied de Port private albergue; Roncesvalles parochial albergue; Zubiri private albergue; Pamplona hotel; Mañeru private albergue; Villamayor de Monjardin parochial albergue; Viana hotel and today Logroño a municipal albergue. Each has it’s quirks and with the exception of the behemoth of Roncesvalles, I’d happy stay in all again. It has also become very evident that older buildings are much cooler at night than modern ones! If you want to know the names of the individual accommodation I have used then contact me directly.

As for today’s actual walk … a brief 10km stroll from Viana to Logroño was uneventful, it didn’t even warrant a coffee stop! It was, however, noteworthy for me for two occurrences, a border crossing of sorts and a first sighting of old friends. The border crossing meant that it was time to leave the province of Navarra, where I had been walking since leaving France, and enter La Rioja. This means we are really in wine-country now, Logroño is the capital of Spain’s premium wine-making region. A subject for a post another day I’m sure. When entering Logroño you cross the River Ebro, which although has it’s source less than 100km from the Atlantic actually flows almost 1000km east to enter the Mediterranean near Tarragona. On the far bank of the river I was delighted to see and hear the presence of white storks in their incredible nests. Having seen many of these on previous trips to Spain I was very pleased to my first of the Camino. I love these odd looking birds and am particularly fond of their amazing clanking beak greetings to their partner. It is something to behold.