Day five - Puente La Reina to Estella

The medieval hilltop town of Cirauqui

We got off to an excellent start today, hitting the road at 6.30am. We weren't the first by any means - plenty of other pilgrims were marching down the street towards the famous bridge at the same time.

The bridge - Puente La Reina

There's a story behind why we were able to get away so early and it reflects a little on the symbiotic relationship between the pilgrims and the service industry that's grown up to serve them.

Yesterday we also started early, but we did so by forgoing the breakfast that had been part of our night's accommodation. We stopped in central Pamplona - I had a tortilla (the traditional omelette with potato and sometimes a few other things. Cathie had a croissant. We were so pleased with our early rate of progress that we didn't think to stop or eat much. When we arrived, I went out and bought some beer and some nice almond biscuits, but we were too tired to think and we just had a siesta. We both thought we'd seen that there was a set menu at the restaurant below us, which opened for dinner at 7pm.

We were there at 7pm, and so were a whole bunch of pilgrims. The first question from us and from many others around us was "Is there a set menu or pilgrim menu?" The next question was "Is there a menu in English (or French, or German, or anything at all but Spanish)?"

The answer to both questions was "no".

There are two sides to this. One is that we're guests in Spain and courtesy demands that we learn to live with their language and customs. The other is that restaurants and hostels like this exist in the part of town where we were located, largely to service the pilgrim trade - without pilgrims they'd have no business, so shouldn't they try to be a little accommodating? 

We'd allowed ourselves to get a bit run-down. We were tired and hungry (our fault for not looking after ourselves better during the day). But we just wanted food. The timid waiter tried to go through the 20 or more items on the menu, but we quickly stopped him and asked him to just bring two plates of the huge paella we'd seen at the entrance and two glasses of wine.

We were glad we did that. Others struggled to try to understand the menu, most giving up and ordering a pizza or hamburger. As our paella was already made, it arrived quickly. The glass of wine was pathetic in size, especially since they charged us €3 for each glass (most pilgrim menus include a glass or half a bottle of wine in the price). We ate and headed for bed, that's all we wanted to do.

So, the Hostal Bidean didn't score well for us in sensitivity to pilgrims needs at night. However, they realised their limitations around breakfast. Most pilgrims want to head away as early as possible. Hostal Bidean didn't open its restaurant until 9am, so they simply offered a voucher to a nearby bakery and bar which opened at 6am. What a smart move, benefitting both hotel and bakery. We were there for our breakfast a few minutes after 6am, but by the time we were done the place was packed.

We were on our way by 6.30am. It was pretty cool, so in addition to the T-shirt of the past few days, I had on a light fleece and a light rain jacket. The top layer came on and off during the day, but the wind kept things down around 14 or 15 and feeling cooler in the breeze - nice for walking.

We were rattling along at 4km/h for the first hour and a half, when a nasty little incline slowed us down, but we easily covered 7km in the first two hours - great progress.

One of the most wonderful sights on today's walk was the approach to the hilltop city of Cirauqui. The sun was lighting up the ancient buildings, but the black clouds behind threatened rain.

It was a steep climb through the town. We were both in need of a toilet stop and we aimed to patronise a bar with such a facility (we fancied coffee as well as a toilet stop). Strangely for such a beautiful town, there wasn't a bar with proper service - at least we didn't find one. However, there was a splendid toilet in the square at the top of the town.

On a deeply personal note. The Spanish diet is rich in bread, egg, cheese and ham. We've seen very little sign of our daily greens, our overdoses on broccoli and spinach, our breakfast of oats and bran. The delicate workings of our internal plumbing are waving the red flag and shouting "give us a break".

I wish we could. On the rare chances we've had, we've pigged out on salads, but any more croissants for breakfast and tortilla for lunch and my internal workings are likely to shut down. As my darling Cathie just commented "I wish The Way would just move along". Enough of that.

On the downward slope out of Cirauqui, we sat awhile (on a cold stone bench) and ate the rolls we'd bought at our breakfast venue. More bread, more egg, more cheese - oh woe!

An excellent example of Roman road.

We couldn't help but notice what is one of the best examples of Calzada Romana (Roman road) on the entire Camino and continuing on over a single span Roman bridge.

Cathie, roamin' across the Roman bridge.

On we went to Lorca. By then we were well ready for a coffee, after 13.5km we'd been on the road nearly four hours. Lorca disappointed at first, no bars apparent, but suddenly there were two, directly opposite each other. The one on the left was attached to a hostel and looked larger, so I ducked in and asked if he had a toilet. "Upstairs" was the friendly reply. "In that case I'll have two cafe con leches". Both the coffee and the toilet were deeply satisfying.

We drifted on to our next destination, Villatuerte, 4.5km away. We hadn't gone far when we struck a temporary barrier across the path. We were being re-directed on to a farm road. After a while I checked the Camino app on my phone and found we were a long way from the path and getting further away with every step.

If I thought that was bad, 20 minutes later it was diabolical. We were walking through vast fields of some sort of grain.

Hundreds of hectares of this (wheat)

Or this (barley)

There were loads of both, but the wheat was dominant and darker green. It spread almost as far as the eye could see. We reached a certain point in our detour and there was some heavy-duty maintenance of some large and expensive harvesting machines going on. 

So here's my completely random guess. You could tell they were harvesting huge areas of wheat and the pilgrim trail was cutting through the area of operation. Accordingly, we were sent on a detour which at the time seemed extreme, but in fact didn't seem to adda whole lot to our distance for the day.

Eventually we arrived in Villatuerte and rejoined the path. From there it was the routine we've come to expect - no matter how long or short the day is, the path stretches beyond your expectations in the last 5km. It should have been 3.9km on to Estella, but it was more. Not only that, but our hotel, the Hostal El Volante, was about as far on the other side of Estella as you could imagine. We left behind the old part of town and almost departed the suburbs as well before we found it. The only blessing to be taken from that is that it shortens tomorrow's journey.

We couldn't have had a more enthusiastic welcome, but we found to our disappointment that today is a public holiday. No supermarkets, and very little of anything else open. To get dinner and some healthy food tonight, our options are severely limited, especially as the main part of town is 2km away, downhill.

Cathie has been busy researching and although I'm not going to give you the full version of the origins of today's public knees-up, you can read all about it here: http://www.estellaturismo.com/en/what-to-see-in-estella/basilica-del-puy-de-estella-lizarra.php

Alternatively, there's this: https://www.caminodesantiagoestella.org/santuario-virgen-del-puy/

The one shining light is that breakfast is available at 6.30am at the bar across the road. As we couldn't buy beer anywhere close, a while ago we went across to our breakfast venue to get a beer. Some sort of religious lunch was in progress. It's cold and windy outside, so we retreated to our room, where our resident bottle of whisky is giving me the strength to go on.

Here we are then, in our very nice, modern hotel room, far removed from the pilgrim experience. It could be worse, at least we've done the washing. We've targeted a restaurant reasonably close by, where we hope we can get food.

I blush to mention this, but I've had a request for the earworm of the day. The older I get, the further back is the source of the music that inhabits my brain. It only takes a key word to set it off - it's as if my brain wants to expunge the oldest memories first to clear the decks.

At first the word "convoy" started me off on old Flanders and Swan ditty about buses. I wasn't going to include it, but I can tell you're busting to hear it. Listen for the reference to the word "convoy" https://youtu.be/7yHrpPRYgYM 

Then a casual reference to oranges on a billboard sparked this song: https://youtu.be/Z0G3SwvQ0Hg.

Here's the photos from today: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nasPNAfCWhRLAyTp6

Here's the Relive video from today: https://www.relive.cc/view/vevWQZox1y6

A further update to today, Despite our feelings on arrival, when we didn't want to go anywhere, we walked back into the town square where we had dinner at Monjardin. We had some feeling of foreboding, as the religious festival was in full cry around the square, but we immediately recognised a fellow hiker, Marion, from Bordeaux, a landscape architect with whom we'd had breakfast and walked awhile with, so we sat down beside her. On our other side was Max from Germany, who works in HR in Switzerland.

We had a nice conversation with both of them, enjoyed food that wasn't all carbohydrate and wandered back to our hotel feeling content that we were on top of everything. 

Tomorrow is a short day into Los Arcos. We may take the alternate scenic route, but first we have to survive the wine fountain at Irache.