Pamplona to Puenta La Reina

Today we were once again up early and setting out of Pamplona at 730am in the semi dark. It was a great walk out passing parklands and the grounds of Naverra University. Pamplona waterblast and sweep their streets every morning so a nice time to walk!
Once we had got out into countryside it was a long uphill walk with a nice cool breeze to ease the climb. We had walked about 6.1 km
before having a much needed coffee and something to eat!
We carried on climbing until we reached the top named Alto del Pardon. It has huge wind turbines and a row of wrought iron ancient pilgrims looking quite spectacular with views of the valleys all round.
The farm land below was all ploughed up and sown with grass seed and big piles of freshly harvested hay. Not one stock unit to be seen. The land is clay and rock.
After the joy of getting to the top..altitude 780 metres we then had the not so joyous descent on rocky steep paths. Again our walking poles were a godsend.
On we walked with not much protection from sun and through a couple of sleepy little towns where the locals were probably looking out their window thinking silly fools walking in the heat of the day!
We found a great bar 5 km before our destination and lovely to be in the shade having a cold beer but it did make the last 5 km a long way home.
Puenta LA Reina is a cute medieval town famous for its Roman bridge. The hotel is also quaint and the restaurant looks to be serving great food so will be enjoying that soon. We keep seeing the same pilgrims and we haven't mentioned the rugby to the Aussie couple. Brian has just been down at the bar with the Welsh man comparing notes. A couple of us pilgrims are sporting blisters but we just taking 1 day at a time. I had to don the socks and sandal look for part of the walk today! We will surely sleep well tonightRead more