Watching the Weather After the brilliant weather yesterday, getting from Logrono to Najera became a real problem almost from the start. I started out in a fleece, but it began to drizzle so I changed it for my rain jacket. An hour later, I was feeling quite miserable with cold, and clearly not maintaining my body temperature very well. So time for another change and a bite to eat. The fleece went back on top, storm pants and I replaced my walking cutoff gloves with both liner and outer gloves. Other than removing the outer gloves later in the morning, I was like this until lunchtime. Even then, only the storm pants came off. This used all the classic layers that I have, so it will be interesting to see how I will cope if I ... read more

Estelle to Los Arcos This day has become a bit of a blur, so until I get my notes together, this is just a place marker. Said farewell to la senora peligrina de puerte y su compandora this morning. They are back to work tomorrow, as are many of the others who have been our company on the Camino these past few days. I expect that next weekend will bring out a new group of people who are doing the Camino in parts, or just enjoying walking a local section from time to time. Getting Less Lost I was quite pleased with myself this morning. My sense for being off-track has been sharpened immensely, and today I took just one wrong turn, and detected the error in less than 20m! I suppose coming to a dead ... read more

Another Early Start I suppose if one is going to carry a GPS and not use it properly, then one cannot complain about a few navigational mishaps. Well, that won´t stop me. I actually blame the light. There wasn´t much of it about at 6.30am in Pamplona, at least, not when I needed it. In reality, Pamplona was well lit, but I wasn´t paying as much attention as I should have been, and despite having loaded the daily routes into my GPS, I didn´t actually pay any attention to it when I walked about a kilometre past one of my marked waypoints. When I realised that I had done this, I was much calmer than I expected to be, and found a way back on track. Perhaps having made an early start was part of why ... read more

Desayuno In discussing the trip before we left, Wal had made much of the practice of departing early, walking an hour or so, and stopping at the first town for desayuno (breakfast). I expressed my doubts about this at the time, but was assured this was a good pattern. So when I found that Wal and Martin were drinking their vending machine coffee, I must say I was just a little surprized. We did stop at the first town, where a bar was doing a roaring trade serving desayuno to a mix of some locals and a hoard of peligrino. So there was some truth in what Wal had said, after all. Departing ways Shortly after we left the town, Martin and Wal pushed ahead of me, and I had mixed company for the rest of ... read more

Long Time on the Road Wal and I took just over 48 hours from when we left home to arriving in St Jean Pied de Port on the bus. We were then in a race to get to the credential office so that we could get into an alburge. Martin, Wal´s German friend had joined us at Montparnasee, and we had travelled down to Bayonne in the same train, then on to St Jean. It was clear there was an advantage to being at the head of the queue, perhaps because at 2030, by the time it took to process everyone, the last ones would not be in their accommodation much before 2130, and that would be an issue. The three of us got into the same alburge, but at that stage I lost touch with ... read more