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! 

Startpoint: St Jean Pied de Port, France; Endpoint: Roncesvalles, Spain. Distance walked: about 25km; Steps taken: 37,754; Condition: wet, very frigging wet.

During our walk today, my Dad quite innocently remarked on how quiet the room had been in our hostel in SJPP. Apparently he slept like a log. Little did he know, and naturally I was quite eagre to inform him, that while he may have slept soundly, the other eight inhabitants of the room (myself included) did not sleep too well, due to my Dad snoring. He made a sound not unlike, I imagine, what a very large gorilla might sound like, if it were to accidentally inhale a malfunctioning washing-machine.

The first day of the Camino Frances (the name of the walk from SJPP to Santiago) is, I hope, by far the toughest. We climbed about 1,100 meters (higher than Carraountoohil, the highest mountain in Ireland), descended another 400m, crossed the border into Spain, and covered about 25 kilometers. The weather was such that for most of the way, we walked through what seemed to be a very cold steam room – I guess it didn´t rain as such, it was more like we were walking through the rain. The water just hung in the air in front of us and let us collect the raindrops on our clothes as we passed. Occasionally the mist would rise and we could see some mountainous scenary. If we were lucky, we could see a cow, a horse or a few hundred sheep. The animals just stood there up the mountain, in the wet, in the wind and stared at us darkly. I imagine if they spoke,  they would say “we have no choice, but what the frig are you plonkers doing out here, you nutters!?”. A lot of the animals had cow bells, and the sound reminded me of the Heidi books – I don´t remember it ever raining in the Heidi books.

At some point today, we crossed the border into Spain. We´re not entirely sure when it happened, but at one point, a very kind gent of unknown nationality hailed us and pointed to a large stone pillar. In an unknown language (consisting at least 75% of jumping across an imaginary line and shouting “espan!” and “lefrance”), he made it clear to us that the border had now been crossed.

People on the Camino are all very friendly. Everyone seems very keen to help one another out, make new friends, and share whatever any useful knowledge they have. One lady we met, from Ireland as it happened, was kind enough to place her head in the middle of a conversation between my Dad and another pilgrim, and impart the knowledge, both of her existence and her ability to speak english non-stop to my Dad and the other pilgrim. What a nice gesture.

There is quite a significant number of Irish people travelling with us, at least on this leg of the walk. The cheap Ryanair flight to Biarritz is certainly part of the reason. For some reason my father announcing he is from Longford affords a much warmer reaction than my announcing I am from Dublin, but I try not to let it get me down. We met people from Tipperary, West Cork, Leitrim, Galway, and a few other places. When they hear Dad is from Longford, they´re often curious about who he knows where, how and why, and how many acres they have. Only one person asked about where in Dublin I was from, but he seemed disappointed when I said Rathfarnham.

We´ve also met people from a load of other places: a Cuban man from living in Miami (where it´s apparently “too flat to train for this!”); many Canadians, from various parts of that huge country, some of whom from places where it´s “too flat to train for this!”, plus New Zealanders, Australians, Germans, a Russian, French and Spanish. It´s not too flat to train for it in ireland, but I feel like we didn´t train enough anyway.

During the day, we hadn´t met any Italians, but five Italian gents gently (but firmly) squeezed themselves into the queue to register for beds as we reached our hostel this evening, so now we have the envious pleasure of their company right next to our own beds. One of their group actually has the bunk right below mine. He was nice enough to smear himself in Deep Heat and then eat some Chorizo in his bunk, so now we can all enjoy the delicious aroma of the real Spain while we sleep.

As we walked today, my Dad and I talked a little about his childhood and his (and therefore my antecedents). After we observed and photographed some local cattle (don´t hold your breathe, cattle pics might be while), he informed me, after due examination and consideration, that they were cows, but with very small teat. He then told me about his upbringing near (but not on) a farm in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, where he had regularly helped out on a farm, turning the hay and milking the cows. I asked if he and his brother had been paid for the work, and he told me that they´d basically been a pair of nuisances hanging around the Brady´s farm and  were of more trouble than they were of use.

He also told me about his father´s mother´s father (my great-great-grandfather), one George Ryan, who emigrated to Australia from Ireland, for no clear reason in the late nineteenth century. When asked about the reason, my great-grandfather was known to comment “because the poor man´s wife was a thundering bitch”, which is probably as good a reason as any. It was a good story.

We´re staying tonight in Ronscevalles in a huge hostel converted from a monastery, I´m guessing. The beds cost us €10 each. A three course meal with wine cost us only €9! Yes, with wine! We even got a lovely little Dutch lady to wash andry all our dirty, stinky clothes for only €2.70.

Pilgrims get the best deals.

Start: Dublin; End: St Jean Pied de Port. Total travelled: lots.

It’s just gone 9pm. Officially lights out in the hostel is at 10.30, but the light in the room doesn’t work anyway and the eight beds in the room are already full of resting pilgrims . The sleeping bag I’m in was last used to contain a hangover at Electric Picnic, so being in bed by 9 is new for both of us. As we have to be out by 8am (house rules) and we have an 8 hour climb into the Pyranees ahead of us tomorrow, it’s probably not a bad thing.

We had dinner in a little pizzeria down the road. A local cat played with the diners as they ate, and when I went to use the bathroom, a local dog was playing with the staff in the kitchen.

We started the day with a taxi ride to Dublin airport at 6.30. We entertained the taxi driver with the usual questions of `are you busy?’ and ‘are you starting or finishing?’. He responded by saying how he heard on the radio that someone had died recently on the Camino. It was nice of him to show such interest, I thought.

Once we reached Biarritz airport we were able to get a bus journey to the Bayonne train station for only €1. The bus was full of Irish – some were going for the Camino (boots and backpacks) and the rest were going to Lourdes (fancy roll-cases and pretty silk scarves). One gent was nice enough to open a packet of cheese flavoured popcorn he’d brought from home, so everyone on the busy bus was able to enjoy the aroma.

As we passed a bridge in Bayonne town centre, we all noticed the flags of the Basque country which flew high above it in red and green. ‘Up Mayo!’, shouted popcorn man. Oh, how we laughed.

We got train tickets in Bayonne station and had a bite to eat as we waited for our train. The three waitresses on duty were very busy doing things that had nothing to do with serving food to customers. My father tried his French on one lady as she handed him our beers. ‘Danke’, he said. She didn’t respond. When we saw her deal with other customers, we realised that she could ask for money in English, but she could only smile in French. As we left, my dad tried his luck again. ‘Merci’, but she was as unimpressed with his French as she was with his German. We left her a €0.70 tip, which was pretty generous as that’s nearly enough for a bus ticket to the airport.

We picked up our Camino Credentials when we arrived in SJPP, and were directed towards a refuge with available beds. Within two hours, we were wandering around the town showing new pilgrims where to go.

Tomorrow we start walking.