Startpoint: Roscevalles; Endpoint¨: Zubiri (halfway to Pamplona). Steps taken: 70,374; Distance walked: 22km today (about 47km total). Condition: still wet, sore feet, no blisters.

We started off this morning, like any other morning really, being interview by German TV. As we left the Roscesvalles Monastery/Hostel, we were approached by a very friendly gentleman and asked if we would participate in a documentary for ZDF (the RTE2 of Germany). After the usual jokes about getting hair and make-up, we turned to the camera and answered the interviewer´,s questions about why we were doing the Camino and what we were expecting to find at the end. I think he (not unlike my mother), was hoping us to talk about spiritual uplifting and a journey of communion with the holy spirit. I don´t think he was too impressed with our comments about ” like walking and it´s, like, a big walk, ye know?”.

In any event, he thanked us for our participation and wished us luck. He told us that we were his first interview for the documentary: he´d been in Santiago three weeks previously to interview the dean of the cathedral, but the dean was unable to speak to him due to an urgent personal visit from the Irish Primeminister. Good man, Enda!

The documentary will air on ZDF on January 5th, 2014 at 9.45pm. Whether we make the final cut is doubtful.

When my dad asked the evening we arrived, none of the volunteers in the monastery/hostel knew what order ran the monastery. My dad found this lack of knowledge very interesting and made a point of telling the television crew, so look out for that piece of fun trivia in the documentary. [Spoiler alert: it´s the Augustinians.]

Answering the TV crew´s questions about my motivations for doing the Camino reminded me of checking into the Roncesvalles hostel the previous evening. The registration form required us to tick a box: Catholic, Protestant, Other or No Religion. Given the very large sign at the door that ¨”No Tourists Permitted, Only Pilgrims!”, I was more than a little nervous that ticking No Religioin would earn me a kick out the door. Luckily I was made feel just as welcome as the devout.

Remember the five queue-skipping Deep Heat wearing Italians from yesterday? Well one of them slept in our cubicle last night, while his friends were in the cublicle next door. As I was drifting off into a well earned sleep, one of the friends leant over the partition and, mistaking me for his (equally bald) friend, grabbed my sleeping bag, pulled it urgently and shook it as hard as he could. I woke and enquired as mildly as I could muster “what the bloody flipping hell!?!? Flip´s sake!?” [language edited for underage readers], upon which he turned to his friend and exchanged a joke in Italian. All I could gather was that the punchline was ´tomate´, so it must have been a good joke. After that, everyone turned around and went back to sleep. Who knows a good tomato joke? I´m intrigued.

I made a comment in my last post about some of the people we met, and realised today that some of those comments could be taken as making fun of the other people doing the camino, which wasn´t really what I wanted to do, so I´ve gone back and edited it a bit (queue-jumping, deep heat wearing, tomato-joking italians excluded). Most of the people have been very friendly, helpful and talkative and we´ve been having a great time getting to know them. Twice tonight, I´ve sat down to write this post and have been interupted by people wanting to chat about my experiences so [Edit while writing: now I´ve been interupted three times] far. After they tried to apologise for disturbing me, I made a point to the first couple that it would be pretty stupid to sit here and blog about the Camino, without actually experiencing what was going on around me. A point that probably makes sense, but it likely to cause some of these daily updates to be later than others, if they ever arrive.

A lot of people seem very impressed that my Dad and I are doing this together. They thing it´s great that a father and son are taking the opportunity to spend so much time together. We tell them that we´ll decide whether it was great or not when we get to the end. They laugh when we say that. We don´t think it´s funny.

Our feet are sore today. It was nowhere near as bad as yesterday, but still quite hilly and quite wet. We´re moving down the valleys out of the Pyrenees, and I guess you need to cross some hills to get out of the valleys. The sore feet and the damp weather made the hot showers and dry clothes at the end feel pretty flipping amazing.

I met three people tonight who said they had left jobs that were not fulfilling to do something else, and two people who said they were writers. Interesting. I also drank pints of beer for €2.50 each,  got free wine with dinner and got €1 cans of lager out of a vending machine.

Tomorrow we should reach Pamplona, famous for Hemingway and bullfights. Dad wants to have a hot bath when we get there. Olé!