Estella cont.

Albergues can be broadly classified as religious, municipal, association, or private. In order, that means they're run by the church, the council, a YHA type group, or, and hint's in the name, a private entity. The former two are usually the cheapest, religious ones are rarer and tend to be by donation, while the municipal ones are almost always the biggest.

Motivated by last night's ruckus, I refused to stay at the municipal today, and pushed on, in the rain, getting lost, to privately operated Alda. This turned out to be a hotel with a few rooms of bunk beds (WOODEN ONES, nice and sturdy).

For €14 I got a spot in an eight bed women only room, with an ensuite, SWOON, which ended up only having five women in it, including me. This buoyed me greatly. I often forget how much I need to be around women, until I haven't in while and everything gets hard. It is genuinely like getting a massage. Give me a few hours with just women and everything is right again.

By the time I'd had a shower and been very very quiet in the tv room nobody else seemed to have cottoned onto yet, it had stopped raining and I headed out for an explore and a tiny pub crawl.

None of us snored and it was warm enough to get out of my socks and top and eventually sleeping bag overnight, so needless to say best sleep yet. I woke up at 6.44 feeling incredulous, but I've since worked out Spain kicked into daylight savings overnight and turned the clocks forward. False alarm.Read more