Year: 2024
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Olives, grapes and cherries
We walked out of Los Arcos after some recent overnight rain. The trail was muddy and slippery – which just offered us more opportunities to spot plants. The fruit is far from ripe, but that didn’t stop us sampling the cherries we noticed. We continue to pass fields filled with wheat but more and more…
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What a load of bull
Today marked the end of our first week, and what a finish it was. We arrived in Los Arcos after a short-ish 12.63km walk, to be greeted by a brass band playing for the local fiesta, and then discovered that the town’s annual bull run was being held in the evening. Not only that, but…
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Du pan, du van, du Patxaran
It’s the end of day 6, and we’ve taken the decision to have a half day. As mentioned in We passed 100km!, we had planned on a long day today and a rest day tomorrow (every week, walk for 6 days and rest for 1). However, we decided to walk for half a day on…
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Flora along the Way again
The trails and paths of the Camino are lined with so many plants and species. Some, like wheat and barley are familiar but there are also many that I’ve never even heard of (let alone seen) before! The last time I posted about the Flora on the Way and have decided to keep up the…
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Grapes and gripes
It seems everyone on the Camino has heard of the winery (Irache) with an outdoor tap that serves vino tinto (red wine) for free to passing Peregrino (pilgrims walking the Camino). It’s a great bit of marketing for the winery who make a point of exclaiming the tap is to help encourage the pilgrims. It…
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Medieval Streets, Poppies and Wheat
As we left Puente la Reina we walked through the medieval town with narrow cobbled streets and ancient doorways. The stone buildings really seemed to stare down on us disapprovingly as we left the town (after a morning coffee and pastry, of course). Like the day before, we swiftly found ourselves walking along the Camino…
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We passed 100km!
Today we passed our first 100km (116.15km, in fact). The journey from Puente La Reina to Estella was 23.98km and other than an initial steep climb – thankfully early in the day before we were too tired – it was fairly uneventful. We had planned on a long day tomorrow and a rest day on…
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Days 3 & 4: Pintxos and ponchos
Day 3 Day 3 saw us walking from Zubiri to Pamplona, a journey of 20.9km. The going wasn’t too tricky, a mostly downhill walk, although some elevation gain of around 360m. Having said that, rain overnight had made a lot of the ground muddy and slippery, so watching our footing was essential. We started the…
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Flora along the Way
Most of the time we stroll by plants at the side of the road and rarely give them a second thought. Today I took the time to focus on some of the familiar and not so familiar plants along the Camino trail. Imagine being able to treat the Camino trail as a larder! So many…
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Some stats from the first two days…
Day two is over, the going was easier even though we walked over 22km (mostly downhill), and we’ve found a local butcher selling wild boar head chorizo and venison chorizo 🤤. Onto the interesting part: some stats. Day 1 Route: Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles (up and over the Pyrenees) Total distance: 25.24km (mostly uphill, some excessively…