Estella's old churches on the Camino de Santiago

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It was another wet weekend in Pamplona. We're tiring of saying that! On Saturday morning though, the skies cleared and we took a drive out to Estella, about 40 minutes away.

This town has been built up around a collection of churches which are part of the route of the Camino del Santiago de Compostela as are many of the villages in the area. It's quite pretty to wander around and the churches are visitor-friendly unless your visit coincides with mass. The tourist information office has a handy list of mass times to help.

The most notable church was San Pedro de la Rúa. We climbed up the stairs outside and found ourselves in a very recently restored church. In our opinion it was a little over-restored with little evidence that it was an old building. Just along the street outside is a lift up to the cloistered courtyard. That was much more akin to what we had expected to see. It has its own curiosity in a twisted column which nobody seems able to explain to us!

We spent the rest of the morning wandering around admiring the religious architecture and carvings and hoping the river didn't burst its banks while we were there! We did find a very nice cafe in the back streets too. Having missed Carnaval the night before we were surprised to find a few people still wandering around in their costumes. They did look slightly worse for wear!!

Train enthusiasts will enjoy the sight of the old station and you can walk along some of the route of the old Ferrocarril Vasco-Navarro railway which runs through town. The park land alongside the swollen river was nice to wander through and a lot of people were taking advantage of the break int eh weather to do exactly that.

So, not a star attraction in Navarra in our opinion but certainly worth a morning out.

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Comments

[Jackie]

estella s beautiful churches
I really enjoyed seeing your excellent photos of the old churches with their details Lovely to be immersed in such an old area and it made me want to go there. Hope u are well. Love Jackie