We left our apartment in Pamplona at 7:30AM, in the cooler hours of the morning. The sunrise was lovely over the square. We crossed over the first of many scallop shell icons of the Camino leaving Pamplona, only a few yards from our hotel.
Our exit out of Pamplona was pretty easy, and we found ourselves on the Camino de Santiago, sharing the path with perigrinos (pilgrims) who are walking to Santiago, until we took a left turn to follow our own course on the EV1, soon to merge with the Camino again. Everyone cheerily greets us with “Buen Camino!”, meaning “Good Journey!”, and we respond in kind.
We are riding though rolling hills of farmland, dotted by giant rolls of harvested hay or mega stacks of giant hay bales like the one below.
Since the weather forecast is for 101F temperature today, we want to get to our hotel in Los Arcos as soon as possible, but we have about 48 miles to pedal and 3,800 feet to climb, on largely gravel roads. There is only one hotel in Los Arcos that offers air conditioning and we’ve booked a room there.
There’s something elemental about this route. It might be the rural-ness of the route, with its gravel roads and rolling vistas, a church steeple visible on the horizon after a few miles riding, poking above a hilltop town. The heat may even contribute to the effect, some vison playing in our heads of a Hollywood pilgrim’s feet on stony ground unsteadily trodding along in the beating sun. Whatever it is, there’s something timeless or at least feels like we are joining a long continuum of people on the same path.
As I’ve noted before, there are a lot of gravel roads in Spain and we struggled a bit on some steep sections with loose gravel before taking some air out of our tires to give us a bit more traction and cushion from the rocks. On the paved road, our tires were pumped up 50PSI, and now we are riding with 25. Feels a LOT better.
From Pamplona, the first town we crossed is called Puente la Reina which translates to Bridge of the Queen. This small Camino town of 2,500 people is located in the state of Navarre. It is the point where the French Way meets the Aragonese Route. As a result of the two paths crossing, Puente la Reina has been a major meeting point along the Camino for hundreds of years.
As pilgrims would stop and rest here, the town had many churches built to allow those to worship on The Way. Most of the churches were built during the 12th Century. One of the most famous churches here is the Iglesia de San Pedro or Church of Saint Peter.
Following the Camino out of town, we passed over a beautiful Romanesque bridge, just through one of the gates of the city. It was originally constructed in the 11th Century. The bridge was built by the medieval queen of King Sancho the Great. It’s purpose was to help pilgrims pass the River Arga that runs beneath, albeit with a statutory toll, which we did not pay today. The bridge spans 110 meters with 6 beautiful arches. This is the bridge that the town was named for.
We cut some corners from Puenta la Reina to Estella Lizarra, avoiding a few gravel roads in favor of paved ones, wanting to hopefully avoid the highest heat of the day. We stopped in Estella Lizarra for some water and cold drinks and an ice cream bar! Fortified, we went on towards Los Arcos, some 13 miles away in withering heat.
Again, we took some shorter paths to get to Los Arcos, arriving about 4PM. Our hotel is a bit south of town but we took a detour into town to get some beer and see the town before heading to our hotel.
Not able to wait, I opened a beer right outside the grocery store in Los Arcos and guzzled it down. I needed one bad!
Our hotel is literally part of a gas station, but it has air conditioning! And it has a bar and restaurant, so we try to put aside our snootiness and settle in for the night. Drinks are cold and inexpensive and dinner filling and not bad! And so our day across romantic Spain ends in a gas station hotel.
It could have been much worse. 🙂
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