(Distance: 26.4 km Time: 7 hours)
The day: Lights on again at 6am, we packed up and went down for a quick breakfast of you guessed... toast and coffee. You get lots of carbs in Europe. Today was not as strenuous from a terrain point of view but our objective was to make up the 5.5 kms we lost yesterday so we worked hard at keeping a good pace. You see, no matter how hard we try to focus on the journey, the destination keeps getting in the way. We have a plan and we want to stick to it instead of just going with what is given to us for that day. None the less, hard walking for 7 hours makes time for hard praying. Today's terrain was a combination of wooded area, farm roads, little towns and paved walkways. The water however tasted horrible so we were drinking less and at lunch time we entered a town and went on the hunt for a grocery store. So for lunch we had fruit, fruit and more fruit with orange drink mixed in. It tasted wonderful and sustained us to our destination. We entered the old city of Pamplona (no bulls running at the time) stopped for a quick drink and moved on. Our feet were aching but we made our destination by 3pm ... back on plan ! (hard to get the project mgr out of me)
The day: Lights on again at 6am, we packed up and went down for a quick breakfast of you guessed... toast and coffee. You get lots of carbs in Europe. Today was not as strenuous from a terrain point of view but our objective was to make up the 5.5 kms we lost yesterday so we worked hard at keeping a good pace. You see, no matter how hard we try to focus on the journey, the destination keeps getting in the way. We have a plan and we want to stick to it instead of just going with what is given to us for that day. None the less, hard walking for 7 hours makes time for hard praying. Today's terrain was a combination of wooded area, farm roads, little towns and paved walkways. The water however tasted horrible so we were drinking less and at lunch time we entered a town and went on the hunt for a grocery store. So for lunch we had fruit, fruit and more fruit with orange drink mixed in. It tasted wonderful and sustained us to our destination. We entered the old city of Pamplona (no bulls running at the time) stopped for a quick drink and moved on. Our feet were aching but we made our destination by 3pm ... back on plan ! (hard to get the project mgr out of me)
The People: we seemed to keep running into Roberta and her young kids and also with Christina. On the path somewhere we walked & talked with a young man from England. He had a bad accident 5 years ago and hurt his back ... the camino is his last bit of rehab before he is totally out from unnder doctor care. It seems that everyone we meet has a story as for how they got here and why they are walking the camino. While we walked through Pamplona, a man stopped us out of the blue with a hearty "Buen Camino!" We stopped and talked for a minute ... he had lived in the US and was so excited about us doing the camino. After wishing us well, we parted ways. Most people are friendly, helpful and don't seem to mind when our Spanish is horrible.
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| our early morning path |
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| making our way across the country side |
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| bridge & waterfall in a little village along the way |
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| gate pilgrims enter into Old Pamplona |
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| streets of Pamplona |
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| our beds for the night at the albergue in Cizor Menor |
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| church in Cizor Menor where we attended Mass |