Will take every buen camino i can get

 Viana to Navarette,  21.2km

Definitely a game of two halves today. Set off from Viana full of the joy of the Camino – the sun was out, I was surrounded by vineyards and it was another day of flying solo, what’s not to love?  

However, it didn’t take long to realise there wasn’t much fuel in the tank this morning. Am used to being bone weary by the end of a day, but usually I start the day with a slightly obnoxious spring in my step.  Not so this morning.  May have been something to do with Clem, Silvana and I staying out till the ungodly hour of 10pm last night, celebrating Clem’s last night on the Camino with a slap up pilgrim meal, could have been the fact that the squid in ink I had for dinner wasn’t quite sitting well with me, or could have just been that I used up my week’s happy quota laughing hysterically for most of the evening. Anyway, wasn’t long before I realised today’s walking was going to be done at a more leisurely pace if I was to avoid a journey through struggle town.  

On the upside, I did have Logrono to look forward to – one of the bigger cities on our route and apparently regularly voted one of the best places to live in Spain. 

Squid cooked in ink – surprisingly good despite having a face only a mother could love (though not my mother obviously)

 I ended up spending about three hours in Logrono – contentedly waiting in the sun for twenty minutes for the pilgrim information office to open, before taking their advice and wandering around the centre of the city to check out the cathedral.  I then holed up for another 45 minutes in a brilliant little Art Deco cafe where I munched out on a second breakfast of spanish omelette, fresh squeezed OJ and an enormous pot of green tea – all to incongruous sounds of an accoustic Guns and Roses cover. Loved every not-on-my-feet minute of it. 

Also needed to squeeze in a bit of retail therapy, and hunted down a Decathlon store to replace my gloves and Swiss army knife, and to add a tennis ball (Mairead’s genius mobile solution for an evening foot massage) and a tin cup (the things I do to make my dad proud) to my collection. 

As soon as I left the shops though I started to realise I was going to pay for all the phaffing around. I still had around 13km to get to the nearest town (let alone the additional 6km to the one my optimistic morning self had thought I might reach) and I was already done in.  The next hour was a complete struggle – both physically, despite it being a relatively easy path, and mentally as I tortured myself into floods of tears by fantasising about everything that could possibly go wrong in my life (low blood sugar anyone?) 

There is a saying that if you ask the Camino for what you need, it will provide, though not always in the way you expect. I had already had this experience a few days back when I spent a good few hours contemplating how to lighten my pack as I mentally reviewed its contents for ditchability. This was of course the day both my gloves and my knife went missing – obviously the result of some divine intervention rather than my absentminded (and hence the need for reinforcements) But today, just as I was giving myself a good talking to about getting it together, there appeared a little cluster of gum trees in a field of daisies with a little bench seat … just perfect for a bit of laying in the grass with elevated legs action. Result. 

The other thing the Camino has given me today is a fair share of ‘Buen Caminos’.  This is the standard farewell amongst pilgrims as we wish each other good walking, but also an occasional greeting from the locals you pass on the street.  Getting a Buen Camino from a locals feels like a bit of a mark of respect. I even got a little greedy for them after my first one, trying to fish them out with a cheery Hola (subtext: check me, I’m a pilgrim walking 800km to Santiago, how cool am I?) these are generally returned with a slightly bemused Hola (subtext: OK idiot, I have seen it all before, now get your whopping great pack out of my face, I am late for work). So, turns out you can’t ask for them, which kind of makes them more delightful, especially as they come from the most unexpected places – a man struggling with his umbrella in howling wind, a high-vis clad builder unloading a truckload of supplies, a graffiti artist in a storm drain and a dapper old gent taking his wife promenading along a riverside path)  I have decided they are like the mental version of a can of Red Bull … which was so what I needed this afternoon. 

The other thing I needed was a bit of quality me time tonight. I was looking forward to catching up with Silvana again this evening, but also feeling I wanted to crawl into bed and assume the foetal position. And while I am a little sad to miss the former (there is no way I had an additional 6kms in me today) I seem to have hit the jackpot on the latter with an albergue in Navarette that is pretty much empty. I have a room to myself (unheard of), with beds rather than bunks (listen while any pilgrims reading this gasp in awe) and – wait for it – I have had a bath (oh joy of blissful joys). Thanks Camino, let’s call that one all for the day.