Blogs from La Rioja, Spain, Europe

By the way, I meant to write at the beginning of this blog that we aren´t looking for sponsorship for the Camino. However, 2 of Philippa´s class mates from Ecclesbourne - Matt Tingle and Chris Gascoyne - have just completed a sponsored Tandem ride from London to Paris to raise money for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) one of Phil´s charities. So if you do feel like contributing to this vital cause, i´m enclosing the link. It is Monday April 30th - Logroño to Ventosa A wonderful dinner with American Debra in an Italian restaurant in Logroño on Sunday night meant that our start for Ventosa on Monday morning was a little sluggish! We promptly decided to have a 48 hour break from the alcohol. Leaving with the dawn, the walk along Logroño´s quiet streets ... read more

Friday April 27th Villamayor de Monjardín is situated halfway up a steep volcanic peak so, for those of you who were wondering if it´s downhill all the way from the Pyrenees, there´s an awful lot of up and down on this Camino, at least until we get to Burgos. Then, at the end of Castile y Léon, it will get more punishing again, with the steepest ascent yet! The walk from Villamayor to Torres del Rio was another beautiful one (don´t worry there were still plenty of steep ups and downs!). All was improved by the fact that the sun shone brightly as we left Estella and we actually had to wear sunspecs and hats for the first time! The route now is dotted with very green expanses of barley oats and rye, interspersed with vines, ... read more

La Rioja – Logroño When we first started planning our trip to check out Northern Spain, the region of La Rioja wasn’t originally going to be a stop. After considering how close we were going to be and the fact that we both really love good wine, we made some revisions to the itinerary and planned for two nights in Logroño! Logroño is the capital of the La Rioja region. We arrived in the early afternoon and settled into our hotel, just 15 minutes from the old part of town, which is always our favorite part of every city, usually with a cathedral and beautiful historic buildings. In Logroño we hit the tourist office first and learned about the wine tours for the next day. Next we ventured into the old part of town for some ... read more

it was a full day in Barcelonia today, so I had a nice wee sleep in then found the food market which was huge. Spent a good couple of hours at the food market looking at all the fresh fruit, meat (including rabbits) seafood and lots of other various stalls. I them walked a bit futher out and explored a bit more of the city. The evening as pretty relaxed as had a couple of beers on the rooftop bar and then we headed out for dinner which was dgood. After dinner went back to the hostel as was around 10pm, chilled out for a bit and went to bed. ... read more

Well howdy Pilgrim! We’re on the Camino or St James Pilgrim’s trail that stretches from St Jean-Pied de Port to Burgos, Spain We are undertaking approx. 40% (or 340km) of the famous Camino de Santiago trail (total 790km) that takes you across northern Spain starting from the Pyrenees Alps in St Jean-Pied de Port, France to Santiago, Spain, hence the aptly named ‘Road to Santiago’ or ‘Camino de Santiago’. Whilst many of the 250,000 annual walkers are completing a religious pilgrimage of sorts or taking time out from the daily grind. Some walkers take up to 40 days to complete the whole trail and even some Spanish courts deem the completion of the Camino as an alternative to ‘community service’ sentence. Everyday, you have fellow walkers greeting you with ‘Buen Camino’ or ‘Good Journey’. Many of ... read more

Firstly, I feel a sincere need to apologise for not updating this earlier. Post-Tetris technology seems ridiculously rare in northern Spain which, combined with a torturous lack of energy and a spiralling addiction to red wine has conspired to make typing near impossible. My present situation highlights this pretty well, sitting in some dark, cold computer room in the middle of nowhere, having slugged through rain and mud for six hours to reach here, grasping a beer and struggling to stay awake. Thinking about it, it's a ludicrous thing to voluntarily put yourself through, but todays shitty weather has been the only downside of a so far outrageously awesome, yet truly bizarre trip. Well, I guess I'll start at the beginning, as trying to chop up time into some form of ludicrously complex written entertainment is ... read more