Startpoint: Logrono; Endpoint: Ventosa; Distance walked: 20km; Steps taken: 25,634; Conditions: sunny again, up to 28 degrees.

After dinner last night, we bumped into a few Irish pilgrims and exchanged various pieces of information and gossip of varying accuracy. It turned out we had just missed the bullfighting, but judging by the looks on their faces, this is not a bad thing. We were in time to catch the tale end of some flamenco dancing (no pun intended) and also saw the act that followed. It was billed as a troupe of local amateur singers, but I’m secretly convinced they were a very convincing tribute act to Edith (Rene’s wife) from ‘allo ‘allo. Edith famously could not carry a tune in a bucket and these ladies mimicked her excellently both in their singing and their costumes. I was thoroughly impressed.

We also followed a crowd of thousands as they moved through the streets to the riverside to watch the fireworks. However, after walking over 200km and crossing the pyranees, my Dad and I were discouraged when we each felt at least seven drops of rain and decided to hightail it back to our hostel before the deluge began. We fought against the thousands of locals coming in the opposite direction before realising there was to be no deluge and we were really just causing trouble. So we behaved like good tourists, turned, looked, and tried to take pictures.

We shared a four-bed room with two street artists who were working the festival. As weary pilgrims with a long walk ahead, we had the lights out by midnight. One of the artists arrived in at about 2 in the morning, turned the lights on, off and on again and then proceeded to noisily change the sheets on his bed. After ensuring, he’d woken us all up, he turned the lights off, got back into his bed and farted loudly. In an impressive display of both defiance and retaliation, the artist’s final fart was a signal for my Dad to immediately begin a cacophony of snoring that rivalled the booms and cracks of the fireworks both in longevity and intensity. I got no sleep, but damn it, it made me proud to be Irish.

Most of the day today we walked through dusty vineyards where the vines were heavy with large bunches of thick red grapes. According to our guidbook, the area used to be a dangerous one for pilgrims due to the prevalence of bandits and wolves. In a nod to tradition, I stole a handful of grapes from an overladen vine while Dad growled at the local farmer.

Dad insisted on getting his fair share of the stolen grapes, so I counted them out: three for him, three for me. I tried, but I just couldn’t enjoy mine after that. They were sour grapes.

As we walked away from the scene of our grand larceny, I considered my anger at losing those few grapes. I wonder if that’s what John Steinbeck was getting at.

The ankle strap I bought a few days ago is certainly helping me walk, but it’s beginning to irritate the soul of my foot. Afraid of blisters, I followed the advice of a fellow pilgrim and wrapped sticky medical tape around and around my feet to protect the skin from the seams of the strap. When I thought of the name for this blog, I saw two meanings behind it: firstly my dad and I are both bald and we’re using our feet a lot, and secondly that when tyres are old, worn and have done too many miles, they’re described as bald, so why not the same with feet. As I pulled the tape off my feet when we arrived in Ventosa, I made a painful move towards a third and much more literal meaning behind the name.

Today we began to meet a new wave of Irish pilgrims; mostly people who walked St Jean to Logrono on a previous occasion and are walking from Logrono to Burgos or somewhere similar this time around. Most of the new Irish walked 30k today as they had to meet their bags at the next hotel in Najerra. Dad and I just did the 20, as we’re carrying out own bags and can do whatever we like.

Myself and Dad have both been badly bitten by some form of insects over the past few days. So we’ve been spraying ourselves liberally with DEET. As we ate our lunch earlier, I could even taste the DEET on our hands. In retrospect, maybe that’s why the grapes were sour.

Buen Camino.