All posts tagged: camino-de-santiago

Day 7 – Ventosa to Azofra

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It’s a fantastic morning when I leave Ventosa, with clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine, and there is the moon still lingering in the sky. I’m the last one out of the door just before eight o’clock. The typical morning pilgrim shadow, where each pebble is magnified by the low-lying sun. Leaving Ventosa behind, I stop and look back. Suddenly the path changes character and looks more like the bottom of a riverbed than a path made for walking. But yes, the yellow arrow is there. Can you spot it? Here I catch up with Kristine and Rachel. Poor Kristine must have been battling with this awful, stony stretch for quite some time. The children Amalia and Ava walk when the path gets challenging, in fact Amalia walks a lot and even pushes the cart herself. We spend some time walking together into the next town Nájera. The cliffs made of the rich, red clay soil of La Rioja, acts as a backdrop to the old part of Nájera and the river Río Nájerilla runs …

Day 6 – Logroño to Ventosa

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Leaving Logroño in the early morning sunshine, I walk past Parroquia de Santiago El Real. This is the oldest church in the area, completed in 1527. It has a single central nave and a Renaissance doorway by Juan Raón.  I also pass a tall chimney, the only thing left of the town’s old tobacco factory, which was in use from 1890 to 1978 in a building that used to be the 17th-century convent of La Merced. It takes me the best part of 45 minutes to finally leave the city behind me, on and alongside busy main roads. The next section is better, as I enter a the shady parkland of Parque de San Miguel, and walk along a reservoir. Here I meet the pilgrim Marcelino Lobato Castillo in his wooden shed, and he stamps my Camino passport. I stop and talk to him for a while, and he tells me that he’s been on a pilgrimage to India for three years! He was also the first pilgrim to make the Portuguese coastal road with …

Day 3 – Estella to Villamayor de Monjardín

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Last year I had to start very early every morning to beat the heat, and I enjoyed the wonderful sunrises. This year is very different. It seems like overcast days and rain will be more the norm, and I figured I might as well have a lie in, since I won’t be walking far today. Well, it doesn’t work out as I had planned, as I wake up early to the rustle of backpacks and people moving about, and then the blinds are pulled up and the windows are thrown wide open by the staff as early as seven o’clock, so I guess the day has started for me too. Amazingly my feet and legs feel fit for another day of walking, and I’m out of the door just before 9 o’clock, which is late in anyone’s book. Leaving Estella, a town I would have liked to explore more. After Estella I pass a delightful forge just outside the small village of Ayegui. It’s called La Forage de Ayegui and it’s run by the most …

Pamplona to Burgos – My Camino Frances 2024

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This year I wanted to experience another section of the Camino Frances, and inspired by last year’s cathedral-to-cathedral theme, I chose Pamplona as the starting point and Burgos as the end point. I arrived from Bilbao completely exhausted, because I spent the night in a hostel there to get a fresh start the next day, or at least that was the idea. It turned out to be a bad decision. Hostels in big cities with no connection to the camino, where everyone is a pilgrim with the same frame of reference, this hostel was full of young people who were partying right through the night and I didn’t sleep a wink. The Camino spirit begins already at the bus station in Bilbao when I met Hanna, a very nice woman from Sweden, who is also on her way to Pamplona and the hours on the bus fly by as we have so much to talk about. She starts her camino right from the moment we get off the bus, while I make my way to …