Startpoint: Ventosa; Endpoint: Ciruena; Distance walked: 26km; Steps taken: 34,662.

We passed a few distance markers today. We’ve done about 210km since leaving St Jean Pied de Port 10 days ago, and I have 570km left to go to Santiago. Dad only has about 80km left to go before Burgos – the lucky so and so.

Over the past few days, we’ve discussed a variety of subjects. These have included Belgium’s colonial history; the politics and scandals of the Irish set-dancing community; the economics of wine and comparisons between Irish, German, and Spanish retails prices and taxation models; the difficulties in driving an Irish registered the wrong way around a roundabout in Portugal in the 1970s; the story behind the authorisation of the shrine of Knock; and the legal considerations of Intellectual Property Rights, including copyright, trademarks and patents, but focussing on the balance between author’s copyright and commentators’ right to reply. It’s all riveting.

We’re staying in a private hostel tonight. The landlord is making a super-human effort to make everyone single weary traveller feel personally unwelcome. There are abstract paintings covering all of the walls by someone called Petrus. I have decided based on zero available evidence that Petrus is the grumpy landlord. Failed artists have never achieved anything, have they?

One of the paintings on the wall is actually not too bad. It’s an oil painting of a Venice canal. It’s not by Petrus.

Our room is fine. We are sharing a 4-bed room with a couple in their 50s. When Dad walked into the room earlier, the lady was on the top bunk in her underwear stretching her legs to the ceiling. A little later, the man managed to combine a loud snore with a louder cough to make a sound I had never heard before. It made me think of two tubas french-kissing.

The common area of the hostel looks a little unfinished. The ceiling is made of raw grey breeze blocks and is held up by steel girders. Some of the blocks have been adapted to allow the plumbing through. There is a very clever system in place now where the people in the common know when the upstairs loo is free by hearing the toilet waste flow over their heads and down the wall just by their ears. It’s obviously a very effluent place. Or possibly affluent. I’ve forgotten my words.

On the road today, we passed another fig tree and I snaffled a few. They were so ripe they fell off the tree as soon as I touched them. The skin came away easily and the fruit was sweet and soft and rich. I gave my Dad one to try too. A little further down the track, we passed a walnut tree. I used my walking stick (the end without the compass) to knock some walnuts to the ground, but the nut inside was black and rotten. Later on again, we passed acres and acres of turnips. We didn’t steal any turnips.

We came to the local bar to have dinner. We order two beers to start things off and then another two to keep us going until the food arrived. It turns out the kitchen doesn’t open for another two hours, so it is becoming possible that many more beers will be had. We met a Brazilian man and now comparing the property markets in Brazil and Ireland. They’re different.

Buen Camino