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| Iglesia de San Martin (Church of St. Martin) is considered one of the most significant Romanesque buildings in Europe |
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| At the door of Iglesia de San Martin |
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| Our Albergue (pilgrim hostel) which includes a welcome dog. |
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| Definitely a pilgrim hostel |
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Fromista
We are in Fromista, a bit of a sleepy town, but quite popular with pilgrims and tourists...
Agua!
The Camino is quite a well-established pathway. It is well marked and also very importantly, it has plenty of fuentes (fountains) for potable water to keep us hydrated.
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| Some fuentes require some work. |
Monday, 30 May 2011
As long as there's a roof, we will sleep
One of our daily adventures is where we will find a place to sleep.
How our day works is that we follow suggested distances to walk each day, each suggested stage ends in a town with enough albergues to usually host all the pilgrims. There are usually smaller towns in between each starting and end point. Our daily distance varies from 20km to 30+km. We aim to walk between 25-30km and usually end up in a smaller town just past the suggested daily end point. It can be good because you get away from the crowds and the smaller hostels provide more of a community feel, but the risk of going beyond the end point is that you arrive at the following town later in the day and the hostels may be full. If the hostels are already complete, then you have 2 choices: keep walking to the next town or negotiate your way with the hostel owners. We have had to do both. We've walked over 30km to find a available hostel more than one. Most memorably we walked the suggested distance of 2 days in order to find a hostel in Burgos! I think we walked around 40km that day only to find out that all the hostels in Burgos were already full.
Kuya Mark has done some amazing negotiating to find us a place to stay. In one case when we continued walking to get ahead, we ended up in a town that had no more beds. Somehow, Kuya Mark was able to find us some bunkbeds in the garage of one of the pensiones (bed & breakfast)!
A few photos to give some examples of where we rest our heads at the end of our long days.
How our day works is that we follow suggested distances to walk each day, each suggested stage ends in a town with enough albergues to usually host all the pilgrims. There are usually smaller towns in between each starting and end point. Our daily distance varies from 20km to 30+km. We aim to walk between 25-30km and usually end up in a smaller town just past the suggested daily end point. It can be good because you get away from the crowds and the smaller hostels provide more of a community feel, but the risk of going beyond the end point is that you arrive at the following town later in the day and the hostels may be full. If the hostels are already complete, then you have 2 choices: keep walking to the next town or negotiate your way with the hostel owners. We have had to do both. We've walked over 30km to find a available hostel more than one. Most memorably we walked the suggested distance of 2 days in order to find a hostel in Burgos! I think we walked around 40km that day only to find out that all the hostels in Burgos were already full.
Kuya Mark has done some amazing negotiating to find us a place to stay. In one case when we continued walking to get ahead, we ended up in a town that had no more beds. Somehow, Kuya Mark was able to find us some bunkbeds in the garage of one of the pensiones (bed & breakfast)!
A few photos to give some examples of where we rest our heads at the end of our long days.
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| New municipal Albergue in Roncesvalles. |
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| A gym in a sports complex provides a FREE roof over our heads. There were no other hostels so we were forced to walk an extra day's worth to get to Burgos, only to find that all the pilgrim hostels were already full. Luckily this gym was available as an overflow. We were the only pilgrims to use it that night. |
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| Sleeping outside on the balcony of an albergue. You can see how light it is outside at 9pm. |
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| The garage that Mark was able to find for us. |
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| Aiden is providing some emergency assistance to Mark during a hot day. |
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Siesta time is no joke
I´m starting to take siesta time very seriously. Not only does it keep me out of the hot afternoon sun, it´s a great opportunity for me to rest me sore knees and hips. A couple of days ago we decided to walk to the next town, unfortunately we ended up walking right in the middle of the afternoon. It was unbelievable. Even after a cold shower and some ice cream, my body was still radiating heat.
For people going to World Youth Day this August, I recommend that you don´t see siesta time as a novelty, but you actually use it as time to rest and stay inside. They days are long here, so you´ll have lots of time to do things in the evening once the weather has cooled down. When I go to bed at 9 (you would too if you were in my shoes), it is still very bright out and looks like it could be the afternoon. All that stuff that we were told in school about hats, sunblock, etc., it´s all true. You should use them! I usually never wear hats until I got here. Mind you, my hat makes me look like I should be working in the paddy fields, but it´s not about style.
The camino is a place where you can meet a lot of people, even people you haven´t seen for ages. A couple days ago there were two men that had met after 40 years of not seeing each other. It was completely by chance. They had gone to university together when they were in there 20s and then one day 40 years later when they turned a corner they were suddenly reunited! It wasn´t planned or anything! It was great to see something like that happen and to watch them joke with each other. After 40 years apart they still had very similar humour.
Heard that the Canucks are going to the finals. That´s great! Go Canucks Go!
For people going to World Youth Day this August, I recommend that you don´t see siesta time as a novelty, but you actually use it as time to rest and stay inside. They days are long here, so you´ll have lots of time to do things in the evening once the weather has cooled down. When I go to bed at 9 (you would too if you were in my shoes), it is still very bright out and looks like it could be the afternoon. All that stuff that we were told in school about hats, sunblock, etc., it´s all true. You should use them! I usually never wear hats until I got here. Mind you, my hat makes me look like I should be working in the paddy fields, but it´s not about style.
The camino is a place where you can meet a lot of people, even people you haven´t seen for ages. A couple days ago there were two men that had met after 40 years of not seeing each other. It was completely by chance. They had gone to university together when they were in there 20s and then one day 40 years later when they turned a corner they were suddenly reunited! It wasn´t planned or anything! It was great to see something like that happen and to watch them joke with each other. After 40 years apart they still had very similar humour.
Heard that the Canucks are going to the finals. That´s great! Go Canucks Go!
Monday, 23 May 2011
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Only mad dogs and English men walk in the mid-day sun
| That´s what a Swedish pilgrim told us one hot afternoon, and I couldn´t agree with him more. |  | |||||
| At a albergue (pilgrim hostel) in Pamplona. |
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| Cleaning up after dinner. We´ve been buying ingredients and making our own dinners in an effort to save money. It´s worth it. We usually only spend around 10 euros each night and it feeds all three of us. |
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| I am the dog whisperer. I miss my dog. |
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| For those of you on Beard Watch, this is the current state of the banditos that I´m traveling with. It gets more and more grizzly each day. |
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| On the first day we climbed an elevation gain of 1400 metres. It was exhausting and beautiful all at the same time. |
Friday, 20 May 2011
Our Lady...of the Pyrenees
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| As we were hiking through the Pyrenees mountain and praying the rosary we came across this statue of our Lady...beautiful! |
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Pamplona
One day 3 we´ve made it to Pamplona. The hardest part was on the first day. It was a steep elevation gain and a long day. By 9 o´clock I´m usually exhausted and finding my way into my sleeping bag (thanks to some very special people in Vancouver!).
Thankfully a friend of mine, Laurie, gave me lots of great advice. She´s helped me avoid blisters. Wish me luck until the next stop!
Thankfully a friend of mine, Laurie, gave me lots of great advice. She´s helped me avoid blisters. Wish me luck until the next stop!
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Holland
Some pics from Holland where we are starting our whole trip:
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| Our trip has started off in Holland where we've been able to pay a short visit to our cousin's new baby, Owen. |
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| No trip to Holland is complete without a trip to the market to pick up some herring! |
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| Yes, sushi is rather expensive here. I learned a new Dutch word. "Klein" means small, it's not some new sushi flavour. |
Camino preparations
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| Aiden-after only a couple days of not shaving. |
You may have noticed in our group photo that Kuya Mark has grown quite a beard. A little patchy perhaps, but it's got length. Well, Aiden has now decided to join him. Aiden won't be shaving for the duration of the camino (and maybe longer...). Partly as a way to reduce the amount of things in his backpack and partly because...well, why not?
I've never seen Aiden with more than a couple days worth of scruff, so it should be interesting too see how it will grow over the next month.
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