It is becoming clear that we are on a
themed holiday rather than a serious pilgrimage! Our walk last year on part of
the French section from Le Puy en Velay was through rural countryside, day on
day and staying at small hotels. The continuity and lack of pampering gave a
sense of engagement. This year we have arranged to be indulged and be bussed
through outer urban straggle and some long flat dry sections in Castile, so the
continuity is lost. The hotels are also better. The result is less time for
reflection, but then we are not in a midlife crisis or particularly feeling an
urgent need for remission of our sins.
So we were bussed up the first steep section
of the old roman road to commence our walk near a wayside shrine. The walk
continued up and over a couple of crests and then down rapidly to Roncesvalles,
of Roland legend. Overnight at a small country hotel in a deserted village.
Depopulation is very noticeable and the Camino is a life-blood for many towns –
as always. Last year at Santiago, 180,000 certificates were issued to pilgrims
who had finished the last 100 km on foot.
Next morning another 19km and then bussed
through industrial suburbs to Pamplona. The capital of old Navarre, which used
to extend into what is now France, has some impressive seventeenth century
walls. Navarre had time to develop some great legends before they were
incorporated into Castile. Bustling street life on a damp evening. The hotel is
a converted palace with several generations of marquesas surveying us from the
walls and their gilded carriage up on blocks at reception. The first marquess
had an adventurous life as a soldier, a general, an admiral, a governor, a
viceroy and finally a priest in the jungle – someone wrote a play about him. Dinner
was pinxos and rioja wine in a small taberna.
We had coffee in Ernest
Hemingway’s pub, with his bronze effigy leaning on the bar and noisy Americans
all around.
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