Unexpected Delights

A 5 am start does not delight me. Shipping items from my pack only to have it weigh just as much due to food/water does not delight me. A long city walk before rejoining the Way does not delight me.

But today was delightful.

We had a brief false start when Missy forgot her poles in her room and had to Google Translate a request for the keys she had just turned over to the front desk. Because we walked about a mile before we reconnected with the path we expected our total today to be 19 miles, but somehow we still got in at 18. After a brief detour to avoid a closed bridge, we walked along a pleasant path out of the city. That connected to what seemed to be a large green space area where we stopped to have breakfast — opportunity one to lighten our packs. Even without coffee we loved our picnic. We heard what we thought were insistent owls, but the birds we saw were not owls. Google tells us they are European Wood Pigeons.

We walked on access roads beside the interstate a lot today, some dirt, some asphalt. There was hardly any climbing, and the breeze was strong, cool, and consistent. I had been dreading this long, hot slog, and it was neither.

Our coffee stop was in a beautiful town. Some Borda crew had stayed there the night before so were ahead of us by the time we stopped. Surprisingly, we didn’t see anyone we recognized on the trail today until we ran into the Borda folks just as we walked in to Najare.

Because we were carrying our lunch — Missy had made what we referred to as the “party sub” from her baguette — we could stop anywhere. Although we weren’t particularly hungry, we passed a stone bench built against a tree trunk that was too perfect not to stop at. The breeze even made us feel slightly chilly!

For reasons we still don’t understand, we passed a lone office chair on its side on top of a large pile of gravel. For reasons I still don’t understand I felt strongly that the chair should be standing up. “Let’s do it,” Missy said. Scrabbling up a pile of gravel ain’t easy. Harder still when you don’t take off your backpack first. (That is a testament to how much I detest putting on my backpack, that it never occurred to me to take it off first.)

Missy, the instigator, did not actually climb said pile of gravel. I righted the chair, then had a seat. Queen of the Hill. I made a point to wedge the chair in so it would stay put, but damned if it wasn’t on its side again before I’d gotten back down the pile.

When we were approaching a town Missy asked if that was Najare. I told her no, because the distance was too short per my Garmin and, more importantly, it wasn’t uphill. And yet it was. We ran into our friends just about to turn on the street for their apartment, then kept walking to the older, prettier part of town to pick up the keys to our apartment. However, because it wasn’t yet 1 o’ clock the hostel wasn’t even open, so we were forced to have our much-beloved Tinto de Verano at the bar across the street while we waited. We couldn’t believe we got to town too early. The hostel itself looked like a great place to stay, and we were very grateful that our bags had already been delivered. We grabbed them then walked down the block to our apartment.

Our plan for today was to get to our apartment, eat the food we brought, and stay put until dinner. But there’s a river right outside that we, of course, couldn’t resist. We grabbed our remaining food and headed out. Our side had the most beautiful grass and a path — and a steep bank. We crossed back over the bridge to the graded-dirt-and-huge-stones side and picked our way under the bridge to sit on the supports and have another picnic while dangling our feet in the ice cold water.

Missy finally found her paella at a cafe by the river (I had pizza), where we sat on the patio under umbrellas. It did get hot today, but with the shade and the breeze we never felt it. We took a short walk around our side of town before coming back to pack.

Our day tomorrow is “only” 13 miles, so we don’t need to leave as early. Also, the cafe by the river opens at 6, so we’ll actually have coffee before leaving town for a change.Read more