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

Buen Camino, Pelegrino
By
Jack Magee

Fields of Red Soil by the Camino
Windmills on the hills
Eagles in the sky
Slopes up, slopes down

Yellow arrows and scallop shells show the way
The way to Santiago
Pilgrims from here and there
Pilgrims from anywhere

Peace and quiet in Ronscesvalles
Over the bridge to Zubiri
Small towns with big churches
Big town withs bullrings

Sore feet, tired legs
Albergue, albergue, albergue
Peligrino meal, paella in Los Arcos
Zzz zzz sleep

Buen Camino Pelegrino

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.

Startpoint: Viana; Endpoint: Logrono; Distance walked: 10km; steps taken: 15,764. Condition: quite nice actually.

We had a very short walk today to end in Logrono, where, by pure coincidence and no planning on our part, there happens to be a festival happening. As Logrono is the capital of the Rioja province, the festival, by pure coincidence and no planning on our part, happens to be a wine festival.

After a lovely pilgrims’ meal in Viana last night, where the vegetarian option was a fried egg for starters followed by scrambled eggs as a main, we got a good night’s sleep and started early this morning. On the road we met a man selling coffees and teas. He had signs up in different languages letting pilgrims know that the bank had repossessed his house. He was trying to earn a bit of extra money by giving coffee to pilgrims and asking for donations. I misread one of the signs that said ‘Vasilevo Donationas Gracias’ or something similar and thought he was also offering free vaseline, which I thought was a very clever idea. Unfortunately I was incorrect, but we gave him a reasonable donation anyway. Who knows if his story is true; he was very enterprising regardless.

We have been passing a lot of ripening fruit over the past few days: blackberries, elderberries, grapes, olives. I thought I had found some blueberries that everyone else had missed; I tasted one. I was wrong. Today we passed some figtrees and a Belgian girl we were walking with took some figs. I didn’t take any fruit; I was too shocked by the small size of the leaves. Whoever wrote Genesis has a future in erotic literature.

Everything was still closed when we arrived in Logrono, so we couldn’t check in anywhere. We had a cup of coffee and planned the walks for the next week. 6 days easy walks should get us to Burgas in time for Dad to catch a bus to Madrid for a day before he flies home. No more short days or festivals till then though.

We checked into a hostel where we’re sharing a small room with a street artist who’s working the festival. He told us he draws caricatures of the people at the festival. He offered to draw one of Dad if he met us on the street, but I think it’s unfair to ask him to try and improve on perfection – Dad already looks like a caricature of Sean Connery. He was also mistaken for Nigel Mansell once, but that was in the Isle of Mann, so it might not count.

Dad brought me into a church today. It was the oldest church in Logrono and had a 30 foot high and 15 foot wide solid gold ornamental wall behind the altar. They offered free biscuits to hungry pilgrims. At the door we were asked for a donation to the cost of keeping the gold polished and shiny.

In the main square this morning they were selling food that was being cooked on the spot. There were two queues: a long one for tripe and a short one for mushrooms. We opted for the shorter queue. For €2 we also got a small bottle of Rioja wine with the mushrooms on toast. That €2 is as close as we’ve come to a rip-off in Spain. We drank the wine as we wandered around the stalls and looked at the buildings.

Later we bought some sweet pastries. We asked the woman what they were and she told us they were six for the price of five, so we bought two. As we left she handed us each a handful of salty nuts with the shells still on. We ate the shells and all, but we’re not sure we were supposed too. They were crunchy.

Dad and I had a disagreement about an item we saw in a shop window. I said it was a clock, but he maintains it was a watch on a stand. We were unable to come to a resolution. This might break the fellowship.

Tonight there will be more wine, music and fireworks, so we found a hostel where there is no curfew. We still have to walk 20k tomorrow, but we may push our bedtime until 11pm or even 11.30pm given the day that’s in it.

We’ve become such a rebellious brace of revelers since beginning our life on the road. Where will the madness end…

Buen Camino + Viva la Rioja!

Startpoint: Los Arcos; Endpoint: Viana; Distance walked: about 18km; Steps taken: about 26,374, Conditions: Weather turned again and was very cloudy this morning, which is not a bad thing at all. It got very hot again in the afternoon.

I´m typing this in the public library in Viana.

We went out last night for dinner with a Canadian couple and an Australian couple and didn´t mention the queen, the commonwealth or the empire even once. Aren´t we wonderful?

Dad and I were staying in an Austrian-run hostel in Los Arcos. It was very organised – they even had signs to tell us where we were allowed to lay our bags (on the bed is not allowed, beside the bed is not allowed, only at the end of the bed is allowed). When we got back to our dorm room, the room was very warm and stuffy and smelled like a tunafish pizza. I don´t like tuna.

We hit the road early as we weren´t sure how far we were going to travel – 18km to Viana or 28km to Logrono. As the bells were ringing for 9am, we reached a place called Sansol and I found a small Farmacia, where I hoped to buy an ankle brace. The Farmacia had a sign outside the door showing weekday opening hours of 9am til 5pm, so we decided to wait. At ten minutes passed nine, an old woman from across the street loudly expressed her concern with the two sweaty foreign gentlemen hanging around outside her window so early on a Monday morning. When she realised we were waiting for the pharmacy to open, she pointed to her watch and indicated (I think) five more minutes. At twenty five minutes past nine, a car sped up the street and skidded to a halt beside us. The pharmacist seemed to be expecting us – I think she was called by the neighbour. She sold me an ankle brace and a tube of deep-heat for €36. The bill presumably included the standard ´getting my ass out of a warm bed´ surcharge.

We had a short and easy enough walk into Viana. With the ankle brace on it, the walking is feeling a lot better. The brace, the walking stick, the neurofen, the deep-heat, the paracetemol and the red wine seem to have done the trick. It´s a delicate balance of treatments. The leg is still a little tender, but I´m moving well enough. We stopped early as the only other option was to do another 10km through (as the guide book puts it) “long slow industrial sprawl” into Logrona. We´ll leave that pleasure for the morning.

Today we forgot one of the lessons we learned earlier in the trip and checked into the first Albergue we found. It´s not a bad place, but we later found a couple of other options including the parochial hostel, incorporated in an ancient church, where the cost of a bad is a donation to the parish of your own choosing. Maybe I could have donated Dad.

In the place where we are staying, the landlady who greeted us didn´t speak any English but seemed to take a shine to Dad. After we registered, she leaned over to take the bag from around his shoulders to carry it up for him. As she did so, she noticed the knee support on his leg. She patted and rubbed it tenderly and uttered some soothing words in Spanish. After she showed us to the dorm, she gave each of our sweaty dusty bodies a hug (his longer than mine, although I´m sure he disagrees) and told us her name was Carmel. Later on, from the shelter of a dark pub, we think we saw Carmel roaming the town in bright red high heels. Looking for Dad, no doubt. Carmel´s got swagger.

I handed our laundry into the hostel to get washed and dried. Unfortunately, due to a miscalculation in the underwear department, I handed all my underwear in to get washed and am now going commando. Does anyone know if there´s a law against going commando in a public library? The library computers still have floppy disk drives and no USB ports, so I think they kinda owe me one.

Unfortunately we saw a few of the Irish people we´d got to know along the way leave us today. They had to make it to Logrono to catch a train to Madrid and a flight home. There were tears, there were sad words, there were photos and the exchange of mobile phone numbers. I´ve met a few people who are going the whole way to Santiago, but the majority (like my Dad) only have limited time and will be leaving at some stage. Sniff…

One of my Aussie relatives made a comment about the Camino a little while ago. With regard to adding it to their bucket list, they thought maybe they´d be well advised to add it to the list, but to add it at the end. At few people on the walk are talking about bucket lists. I´d hate to think “Nah, I´m too old to do that”. I ´d much rather think “Nah, I´ve already frigging done it”.

Tomorrow we head at least as far as Logrono and maybe on to Navarette. Tonight, we´re meeting two Irish lads and an Aussie girl for dinner.

Buen Camino.

Startpoint: Villatuerta. Endpoint: Los Arcos. Distance walked: about 26km. I think we´ve done 149km so far (can somebody else do the math and get back to me?) Steps taken: eh, let´s say another 30,000 or so. Conditions: not a cloud in the sky today and we struggled a bit with heat and the flies in the afternoon. My Achilles tendon (or something down that direction) is giving me some trouble.

A quick poll of our Austrian-run hostel in Los Arcos confirmed that 100% of Pilgrims were supporting the Dubs. Whoop!

We had the pilgrims´dinner in the hostel last night and it was all vegetarian. I loved it. The hostel was fairly small (maybe 25 beds) and run by a (assumed) husband and wife team, who did everything at once: registration, laundry, cooking, cleaning. For the meal, we were sitting at a table with a French man in his mid 70s and a Spanish man in his 60s. At the table, we held an intra-european grandfather show-down. The race was initially tight with Dad taking an early lead of five grandkids compared to an impressive four from each of the gents. Then Dad played his trump card: “…and one on the way!” The crowd went wild, the match was over and Dad left with the admiration and envy of his peers.

Before we had finished the first bottle of (free) wine, we were presented with a second. And when the meal was over, we were given a third bottle to finish off on behalf of a less thirsty table. At about 9pm, we were asked to leave the dining room. They had to prepare the tables for breakfast. They sent us into the garden with our wineglasses and sent another bottle after us to apologise for the inconvenience. On the way to the garden, we recruited another pair of grandfathers (one Scottish, one South African), but neither could come close to Dad´s high score of 5.9 on the Grandkids scale.

The 74-year old Frenchman shared a saying with us, after checking a few words of English. “What are the children of your children called?¨and “When you pay a bill, but you give extra, what is that?” He then announced ¨Grandchildren are a tip from God¨. I think he meant you need to put at least a little effort into producing a child (the unfair division of labour notwithstanding (and pun intended)), but you get a grandchild without having to do anything to earn it.

We left Villatuerta at 7.40am to get as much walking done before the day got hot. We passed Irache (famous for it´s free wine fountain), but in the words of Don MacClean, the levy was dry.

We spent a good portion of the day discussing economics and healthcare with a Texan gentleman wearig a straw hat and blue jeans. To repay us for our insights into the world of finance, he gave us some bread and two types of cheese. I repaid him for his kindness by giving him two Compeed plasters (the sporty version).

Yesterday afternoon, my right leg began to hurt between the heel of my foot and the calf. As it´s Sunday, I wasn´t able to find an open Farmacia, so I wrapped my leg up in my Dad´s bandages and some sellotape and took a Neurofen. I also bought a walking stick in a petrol station to try and take a little of the weight off the leg. My Dad laughed when he saw me with the walking stick, as I´d refused to consider using the walking poles that he has. The walking stick I bought has BOTH a little leather strap AND a compass in the top, so the joke is really on Dad.

We passed the 74-year old a few times today (so he must have passed us too). I felt rather humbled (read: pee´d off) when a man forty years my senior outpaced me by five minutes over a two kilometre track. He then came up to me and without an ounce of condescension, congratulated me on how fast I had walked. He also offered us some ham. I declined; I was still chewing on the greasy rind of defeat.

After arriving in Los Arcos, my Dad and I did our usual wander to find food and beers. As we did, we found the 74-year old. He´d gotten there before us and was just enjoying some spaghetti and meatballs before hitting the road again. He was planning on another 5km in the late afternoon heat before resting. He asked if we would like to join him for a drink, but it was too hot in the square for our delicate Irish selves. He really was a very nice man.

We looked around a little grocers´shop to buy some fruit to snack on tomorrow. In among the dates and plums was a little cardboard packet with a picture of an ankle brace on it’ just what I´d been wishing for all day! Perfecto! I eagerly asked the lady to add the ankle brace to our four apples and two bananas, but the packet was empty. Through a few words of English and a few words of Spanish, she made it clear that she hasn´t actually had any ankle braces in the shop for a very long time, but just keeps the box there to let the thousands of walkers who pass her shop each week know that she used to sell ankle braces and might do so again in the future. What a lovely gesture.

Win a Prize!

We have another decision to make tomorrow: a) 29.5km all the way to Logrono, b) 18.5km to Viane to leave us with a short jaunt to Logrono the following morning, or c) stay in Viane tomorrow and then pass all the way through Logrono the day after without staying over. Put your suggestions in the comments below and the best answer wins a free walking stick with its own leather strap and integrated compass!!* (terms and conditions apply)

We´re meeting a couple of Canadians for dinner tonight. We´re hoping to bump into the Irish gang from the last few days. They took an alternative route today, so we´ll see how they got on.

Bon appetit, Buen Camino & Up the Dubs!

*walking stick will be available from on or around 25th of October. Postage and packing from somewhere in North Spain not included. Compass may or may not actually point North.

Startpoint: Obanos. Endpoint: Villatuerta. Steps taken: another 28,950 or so, bring us up to a total of 160,000 give or take.  Distance walked: 22km, bring us to about 111km total. Condition: very hot day from the off, some sunburn, one insect bite, four sore knees, four sore feet, one sore ankle/calf between us.

Now this is what I expected! It´s boiling, lads – it´s feckin boiling! Probably about 30 degrees today and every Irish person on the Camino is sweating like a fat whale in a small sauna. We were a little late leaving Obanos this morning, partially due to the night out with the Irish crew on Friday. We started walking at about 8.20 and caught up with the five Irish folks just outside Puerte la Reine, shortly after nine. They´d left a good 30 minutes before us, but got distracted by the complexities of life. Despite the mapbook´s instructions, there were quite a few hills on this leg.

Upon leaving Obanos, Dad and I  hadn´t quite decided whether we´d stop in Estella or Villatuerta, so we let the sun decide the matter for us. We passed Lorca at lunchtime and had a bite to eat there and were in Villatuerta by 2.30pm too hot, dusty and tired to go much further.

Today was a day of firsts: the first day we wore sunscreen (but not the first day we needed it); the first day we wore insect repellant (but not the first day we needed it); the first day I ate sunflower seeds straight off a growing sunflower (they tasted exacty like shop-bought sunflowers amazingly); and the first day I got a sunflower splinter embedded in my finger (surprisingly dangerous things, sunflowers, they look so friendly).

As we stopped in Villatuerta, we´re left with a bit of a difficult choice tomorrow. Should we have a very easy day and go just as far as Villa Mayor (13km), or push on and go as far as Los Arcos (25km). I´ll let the ould fella make the call once we see what the weather is like in the morning. Our decision may be (very slightly) influenced by the location of Irache, where the public drinking fountain serves the local red wine instead of water.

After five days of walking, we´re getting into the swing of things. Here´s how a typical day on the Camino is beginning to pan out:

• c. 6am: Dad wakes up and begins mooching about
• c. 7am: Dermot wakes up and begins mooching about
• c. 7.30: we have a bit of breakfast and finish packing the bags (we´re getting good at it now, and each only need one or two repack mulligans)
• c. 8am: hit the road, thinking we should really have left a bit earlier
• c. 9am: pass the first group of people who left earlier than us, but stopped to take pictures of interesting snails
• from 9am to 1pm: pass-out and get passed-out by the same recurring groups of people. Congratulate ourselves on the overtaking and make good excuses for being overtaken. Comment that the hills are steeper than the guidebook suggested. Take some photos of big old churches/castles/monasteries on hills surrounded by vinyards/sunflowers/olive groves.
• c. 2 – 2.30pm, give in to the heat and tiredness and stop off in the next Albergue we find (usually about 4km short of where we´d hoped to end).
• by c. 3.30 – 4pm, have a shower, find a bar, have one beer to rehydrate, another beer to relax and a third to recuperate. Then snooze until the pilgrims´meal at 7pm – 7.30pm.
• c. 8pm, ask for extra (free) wine with the pilgrims´meal. Discuss the steepness of the hills, the value of the meals and the loudness of the Spanish with the other pilgrims.
• c. 10.15pm, realise that you´ve missed lights out and try to sneak quietly to bed.

Someone asked about the five Italian gents who´d been tracking us. We haven´t seen them since Pamplona, but have heard stories of them in the wind, so to speak. There are stories in the Pilgrim community of five men whose talking, snoring and farting habits are more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Today my Dad and I discovered that Dad is far from the oldest man on the Camino, as a 75-year old French man checked into the Albergue just after us. However, we still believe Dad is probably the oldest man on the Camino who was sent by his wife to babysit his son.

Buen Camino!

D

Startpoint: Pamplona; Endpoint: Obanas; Steps taken: 31 thousand and something (the pedometer is in the room and Dad’s asleep); distance walked: about 22km again, which brings to about 89km total and only 699km left to go to Santiago!

I’m writing this on my phone in the empty common room of an empty private hostel. Myself and Dad booked into a little two bed room where the beds are comfy, the room is clean and the shower is cold. I can hear the clock ticking, the fridge humming and a fly buzzing desperately around the room looking for an escape. He’ll be dead by breakfast (the fly).

We stopped today in Obanos cause we were hot, sore and tired when we got here and that’s where the page of the guidebook stops. It seemed easier to stop here than turn the page.

The guidebook said there’s a hotel and a private hostel in Obanos, so we checked in at the first sign we saw saying ‘hostel’. Once we’d checked in, showered and went for a wander, we found the Pilgrim’s Albergue where beds were a third of the price of ours and breakfast was included. I guess we must be staying in the hotel so, and never noticed. Lesson of the day: check the whole town before checking into any accommodation. The place we’re staying is run by a little old lady who speaks no English – she needed to call her daughter to give us false directions to the non-existent supermarket.

Our walk today brought us up over a mountain where metal two-dimensional statues of pilgrims mark the highpoint of the trail. It’s an iconic spot that features in a lot of documentaries and guidebooks. To celebrate the occasion, Dad and I took each other’s pictures standing beside a bronze donkey’s rear-end. There’s a joke to be made there with ass’s ass, put your suggestions in the comments below and the best entry wins a signed copy of the ass’s ass photo featuring the baldfeet pilgrim of your choice.

The camino from Pamplona seemed busier today than the last few days. I think a number of routes begin to merge with our one from here on in. It made it even nicer to see familiar faces from Roncesvalles and Zubiri. A lot of those faces pushed on to the next town, Puente de Reine, but we stopped here and a celebratory beer in the sun as more pilgrims walked past.

The sun came out today. As we’re constantly walking East to West, I got quite bad sunburn on the left side of my neck, while leaving only a medium raw red on my right side. I also got bitten on my ear (not in a friendly way), by some sort of insect. I guess I should consider wearing the sunscreen and insect repellent I made a point of packing.

About three or four hours after we arrived, we bumped into a weary bunch of other Irish walkers, who’d underestimated the journey today and had left Pamplona late. We all met up for the ‘pilgrims menu’ in the local restaurant/bar. I think those who ordered the dry, lukewarm, deep-fried flat-squished chicken lumps were a little jealous of my hot, freshly made omelette. It isn’t often, but occasionally being a veggie is an advantage. We had the usual craic with the Irish gang – we were insulting each other within a few minutes, people insisted on buying more booze that the table could handle and someone told a long joke about a parish priest, a condom and a large musical instrument (complete with hand gestures and various accents).

Due to the indulgent consumption of the free bottles of Obanos wine (chilled, red, delicious), we accidentally repeatedly rechristened the town Obamas.

We might meet the same Irish gang on the road tomorrow, but they’ve a self-confessed weakness for faffing about before leaving the hostel each morning. If we don’t see them, we’ll probably see someone else.

Today my Dad and I discussed the pros and cons of windfarms (we’re in favour), the origin of the phrase ‘Tim’ to describe Catholics in Glasgow (we were corrected by a Catholic Glaswegian), and whether his socks were made of cotton or not (split decision).

Tomorrow we hope to get to Estrella. It’d be our longest day so far (26km), but the path is as flat as a cheap chicken thing is a second-rate Spanish restaurant.

Buen Camino

Startpoint: Zubiri; Endpoint: Pamplona; Steps taken: 99,999 (I don’t actually know how many we took today, as my pedometer only goes to 99,999 – I’ll reset it tomorrow); distance travelled: 23km today (about 72 km in total); conditions: quite good actually.

Well, this is nice. We left Zubiri at 8am and made it to Pamplona by 1.15pm and checked into a hotel (that’s not a typo, we checked into a hotel, not a hostel!). Since then we’ve been sampling the local tapas and beers and all have been most satisfactory.

Unfortunately, the hotel does not have rooms with baths, so no hot bath for dad today. Apparently baths are no longer fashionable in hotels in Spain – at least that’s what our concierge told us. Baths are out of fashion – be warned!

Three days of hostel living has also made us a little thrifty. We baulked at the price of laundry (€1.20 for a pair of socks!) and decided instead to wash everything in the sink in the bathroom. When we left to find dinner, we turned the heater on full blast and turned the airconditioning to 32 degrees, as high as it would go. We checked in a little while ago, and the room feels as hot as a pizza oven. The clothes are all just as wet as they were before, but now slightly warmer. As I sit in the hotel lobby writing this blog on the phone, my dad is upstairs running each sock under the hairdryer. We have 8 hours or more before hitting the road, so he should get it all done before breakfast.

We didn’t see as many people at all today. A lot of the walk there was nobody to be seen either in front or behind us. I think there were three reasons: 1) the relative lack of hills meant everyone could keep to a fairly steady pace (it’s the hills that really test you); 2) Pamplona is so large that everyone sleeps and eats indifferent places and 3) we left about half an hour after everyone else and never caught up.

During our lunch tapas at Cafe Iruna this afternoon, I lost a €5 bet to my father. He was commenting on the sometimes wild gesticulating and extravagant hand gestures of one of our fellow diners. She’d take her sunglasses off and put them back on again about every thirty seconds (no exaggeration). I bet my father that she wasn’t even Spanish (given the majority of the world population isn’t Spanish, I figured I was in with a chance). I lost. After that I commented on the chubbiness of the sparrows picking crumbs from around our table. I was trying to goad him into another bet so I could win my money back. It didn’t work.

We saw a lot of cyclists during our walk today, but given the condition of the paths and the hills, I think cycling the Camino is probably worse than walking it. One guy has a basket on the front of his bike and a trailer on the back. He’s travelling with his little dog. On the uphills, the dog walks himself; on the downhills, the dog rides in the basket. Seems fair.

We saw one of the locations from The Way today – the little hotel/hostel where Martin Sheen meets the grumpy smoking Canadian. The place was really lovely – I kinda wish we had stayed there. But any Canadians we met have been very friendly non-smokers. My Dad told me that one Canadian walker had told Dad he was from Saskatchewan. My Dad got his Canadian geography briefly confused and responded by happily telling the Canadian that he always found that the very nicest Canadians come from the far west. This guy agreed that they probably did. It was only later my Dad realised that Saskatchewan is not in the west.

Tomorrow we’re back to small towns, hostels and multi-bed dorms, so tonight is the only time I’ll know for sure who is snoring in the middle of the night. It’s the little things….

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!