All posts tagged: La Rioja

Day 8 – Azofra to Santo Domingo de la Calzada

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This is a “rest day” for me, as I will only walk 15.4 km. I’ve made a conscious choice to have a few of these to explore the new place I’m coming to, wash clothes that have time to dry for the next day, and simply just to give my body a break and allow myself to rest. Leaving Azofra I’m greeted by one of the few sunrises I see this year. It was one of the highlights last year, and the reward of early mornings to escape the heat in the afternoons. Self-portrait with a mirror window, showing the sum of my kit. My backpack weighs 6 kg and with a full water bottle and my fanny pack I carry almost 7 kg. This after I have chased every last gram and only brought the bare essentials. Vines in the early morning sun. I’m out the door by 6:45 and aim to stop in Cirueña for breakfast. However, Cirueña turns out to be a ghost town and the café by the golf course is …

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 …