Episode Transcript
DAY 6 MORNING BEFORE WALKING
OK, Day 6 morning leaving Estella, we're just walking out at the moment. It's finally cool. I barely slept last night because it's incredibly hot. Very noisy in our apartment. How are you? Yeah, there was a second room where I basically locked myself in. It was like being inside a tomb, it was very, very hot. But at least it was dark and quiet, so I slept better. Yes, it was awful, I feel terrible this morning, just from not sleeping. We've got about 27 kilometers today. It's meant to get up to 41 during the day and we finish in Sansol next to Torres Del Rio. Let's do it.
DAY 6 SUMMARY
Hi everyone, and welcome to Is This The Way, a podcast where we walk the Camino de Santiago. I'm Francesca. And I'm Gaven. And it's Day 6. And we're walking from Estella to Sansol today. This is our first day departing from the recommended stops on the guidebook. True, we walked an extra 7 kilometers onto a little town. The guidebook actually recommends going from Estella to Los Arcos, which is 21.6 kilometers. We went a bit further, we actually ended up with a 28.6 kilometer day and it took us just over 5 hours, so not too bad, we're still well within the window of time that the guidebook sets for even the shorter route, so that's good.
Difficulty: it said 1 / 3 for the shorter recommended walk. We put it as a 6 / 10 just because it's a little bit of a longer day. It's the first 30ish kilometer day that you do. The last 12 kilometers into Los Arcos is no services, no shade, no water stops, and the heat was a killer.
So yeah, as you heard this morning, we had a really, really rough night's sleep. It was very optimistic of us to expect to sleep well in that apartment in Estella. I'd go further and say we had a really, really rough night because including the word sleep is inaccurate. True. I got some sleep, so we ended up sleeping in different rooms, I had one where you literally had to pull down a grating on the window because the street lights were coming through. And I closed the door and it was literally a tomb. It was silent, but it was so hot in there. Literally a tomb or figuratively a tomb? Literally. I thought I was gonna die in there. Or was dead in there. Well, technically, to be a tomb, you should already be dead in there. Yeah, I think I was borderline. And then you suffered through the noise, the open window, you had lots of noise from the neighbors. It seems to be a common thing, I guess in the Spanish buildings is an internal courtyard. So the bedroom window would open onto the courtyard and kind of like all the noise from all of the other apartments echoes up through this noise funnel. Needless to say, we sound absolutely shattered.
So the guidebook says: Make merry at the Irache Wine Fountain, be charmed by historic Monjardin Village and savour the remote path to Los Arcos. Basically a bunch of stuff happened today. It was a really interesting day. It was probably one of my favourite’s of the whole Camino.
To start with the morning maybe, I guess a lot of people who've seen the movie The Way, there's literally a wine fountain on the wall, which is free and they're all filling up their water bottles. It's one of the most iconic bits of the journey, really, is that there's this free wine fountain the pilgrims can partake of. The challenge was it's really soon out of town, so we basically arrived there first thing in the morning. You'll hear all about our adventures of actually being at the wine fountain later, but erratic is probably one way I would describe it. On the plus side, we have pictures of us standing outside of it because there's a constant 24-hour webcam, which is kind of interesting. Yep, the webcam was working. The fountain, not so much. So anyway, we will elaborate on that very shortly.
After the wine fountain though, a little bit further on to Azqueta, a nice coffee stop, nice view of the fields, a little bit of shade, a little bit cooler, which was nice. Still early in the morning, had our coffee, had some breakfast, enjoyed the view and like settled down a little bit for the day. Yeah, I think you closed your eyes for a moment and then we went on. And yeah, the region you start passing into, there's more wineries and a few more vineyards around. Unfortunately, they all looked very closed, the ones that we walked past. So after Azqueta, we were walking towards Villa Mayor and it was really, really pretty town. Yeah, very pretty town. And you look at all of the nice houses in there, big verandas and things in the shade, and you think that's where we would have wanted to stay. That looks like it would be really nice and cool and nice place to sit with a drink in the afternoon. I think if you were taking more time, or maybe you could walk through Estella to there and then you could go past the wine fountain in the evening. And then you could arrive at Villa Mayor and then have a nice evening there. I just don't think there was much there though, because it's all private houses basically. I don't think maybe there is accommodation there, I'm not sure, but I don't recall seeing very much there. You could probably find better accommodation in Estella. All I can say is if you're walking in the middle of summer, try and find somewhere with air conditioning because in those towns like that it can get very hot. We found almost no air conditioning across the Camino. We got quite a few actually, it wasn't so bad. Or we had rooms with fans or something. I think it was rarer than you think. Maybe we'll find out. Indeed!
One of the other quirky little things that we walked past was the Fuente de Los Moros, which was a gothic fountain associated with the Moors. But the design was more like, I guess the Moor connection because it was more like a stepwell, remember the ones in India that you see where you have these steps going down and have the pool of water at the bottom? Actually, one of the most kind of iconic bits of architecture, I think, that we saw along the way. But yeah, that was nice. And it's kind of just on a hillside and opposite that is all just grape vines. It's really picturesque.
Then from there you have this long 12 kilometer stretch to Los Arcos with basically no services. Little shade, little shade, no water, so highly recommend that you stock up. We saw a woman who was coming back because she'd lost her hat or something, and I felt so bad that she basically had to go and then go back again. Yeah, I’d forgotten about that, because those last 12 kilometers is pretty long and gruelling. And we were in peak, peak heat wave, so we had severe weather warnings. It was 42 degrees. And as a result, we got to meet the Civil Guard. Yeah, that was kind of cool. You are on this dirt path in the middle of nowhere and you see a car just kind of coming up towards you. Like with signage, though, police signage. Yeah, with like, police signage. You're like, “should there be cars on this path?” It feels very pedestrian to me. It's like, I wonder what's going to happen. I wonder if there's some kind of like bizarre, rural shakedown from the police.
But actually it was a Civil Guard who are there specifically to help pilgrims on the Camino, which is great. They have a website. They have an emergency phone number. They had bottles of water in the car and they'll just stop me to make sure that everyone had water and was OK and realize that there were no stops along the way until Los Arcos. And they had a stamp for your passport, which is kind of cool. So we got the mobile Civil Guard stamp in our passports. It’s a top tip to know, I think it was 062 that you can call and at any point in time they'll come and help you. So I think it's very important that everyone knows that if you're walking. Particularly if you lose something or have something stolen. They have actual passports, not Pilgrim passports or wallets or money and things like that. Well, there was one point later in what, like 30 days time, where I was considering calling the police. But anyway, we'll come to that. Yeah, that's true. But that's a little way off. We've got to go through a lot of episodes before we get there. Yeah, exactly.
And then we arrived at Los Arcos, which was, I mean, I'm glad we didn't stay because it was kind of a nothing town. I would, I would describe it as… minimal things going on. I just remember you come in and you walk down the Main Street and then out the other end. It wasn't a big town. And we did bump into a bunch of the people that we knew as we stopped for a drink and a snack there as well. Everyone else was stopping in Los Arcos. And there were only a couple of us that walked on to Sansol after that. Yeah, because we got some sandwiches and the lady who lost her glasses had buddied up with these very cute French boys, and they were all coming in together. So I think we briefly exchanged words and ate our sandwiches together. They were all waiting at the wine fountain in the morning as well. I think they also left disappointed, even though they waited longer than us. Yeah, whoops…
Then we went on another 7 kilometers to Sansol where everyone else stopped for the night. Everyone who realized we're going on thought we were insane. Just the heat was so bad, it was so, so hot that day. Yeah, you could actually see the heat waves coming off the tarmac because there's like one tarmac road and then just a sea of wheat everywhere. The last approach into Sansol in particular because you kind of come off the gravel path and onto the road. It's just this curling black tarmac up to the town on a hill. Yeah, through the through wheat. And it was baking hot. When we got there, the guy’s like, “Are you insane? Walking in this heat in the middle of the day!?” Yeah, but it was worth it because the Palacio that we stayed in was just incredible. It was such a nice building. The guy that owns it who cooked us dinner and the guy who he hired – who’d basically had this epiphany when he was walking and then decided to settle and help this guy out in Sansol – the owner doesn't speak any English. So he basically acted like this translator and hosted everyone. So he had this amazing dinner where he'd cooked – they gave us this plate and it was a green soup, and we had to guess what it is. Do you remember what it was? It was like artichoke stalks or something. Yeah, it was so delicious. But I didn't know what it was, I'd never tried it before. Yeah, amazing homemade tortilla, freshly baked bread, this nice soup made out of the artichoke stalks. And you wouldn't think about that – I don't really think about artichokes very much in general – but actually, it was really, really tasty. And apparently he cooks this same dinner every night for the pilgrims, what an amazing thing to put on. I mean, the whole experience. You had a seated dinner. There was one time, at 6 o'clock, we all came down for dinner. And he guided through this whole dinner together, so all the pilgrims eat. And it was so wonderful. And there's tons of food. And the guy just kept on bringing out more and more food for anyone who wanted it. And whatever wine you want to have to drink, basically, or water. And it wasn't like, here's your one little bottle or something in kind of like a restaurant or a regular albergue. It was “have some more, have some more.” Yeah, it was so generous, such great company. We ended up making some good friends as well at our table, that we saw most of the way after that. It was one of those stops that I just couldn't recommend more. I think this and maybe a couple of others are all sort of if you're having your top must stay, please choose this place and support this guy. The house has been in his family for generations. Yeah, they lost it at one point because they couldn't keep it. And then it got really, really run down and he bought it back and then restored it to be an albergue, which is really cool. So this is this incredible story. Yeah, definitely one of my favourite stops on the whole Camino.
It was again, blisteringly hot. It was still 40 degrees at midnight. And the buildings look like it's better than what we were before because it's got walls like 3 or 4 foot thick of stone, a nd little windows, but still like, no fans. Which is a shame because if you just had that little bit of air movement, it would make so much difference. But there was a fridge and a freezer in the room, so we ended up freezing a bottle of water and literally putting it on the back of our necks and lying on it to cool down. And then at one point the guy knocked on the door with a ladder. And he went into the bathroom and there was a skylight in the bathroom that he wanted to open. Yeah. But basically it didn't. It was like more heat comes in. It's like, “no, please close the skylight”. We were basically, like, lying naked on the beds, because it's so hot trying not to move. And then all of a sudden there's just knocking on the door, and when I open it the guy starts walking in with this ladder. I think you're still basically wearing nothing on the bed. I was like, “no, no, no, no, no thank you.” But yeah, we figured it out in the end. I grabbed my phone and I just used the live Google Translate and it worked really well. He's trying to make sure like everyone was comfortable. And that's I guess the way to get fresh air, coming through. So on the back of that, should we see how it got on?
DAY 6 AFTERNOON AFTER WALKING
It's the afternoon of day six and surprisingly, we are still alive. Yeah, it's pretty surprising given we're basically sitting here not moving because it's the middle of the heat wave. It's definitely one of the best walks in terms of incredible scenery. But absolutely battered by the heat, which I think is why we're gonna literally pass out the second that we finish this tonight. Yeah, it's a little bit of a slog this evening, actually, so I'm so exhausted from that. Well, I guess you also didn't sleep last night because it was baking hot last night as well. Yeah, like as we mentioned briefly this morning, I also barely slept last night. We had a nice apartment, but unfortunately there's no air flow. It's just very, very hot and very still. And there's a heat wave, so it's not normal necessarily, but a fan would have made it much more bearable for a very small investment. But even the room we're sitting in now, we're in this beautiful palace. Palacio de Sansol, and we've got this like top floor apartment. It's like wood beams, crazy brick thick stone walls, walls, foot thick stone walls, which are amazing. But our bed sheets are like lots of pillows, big, thick duvet, additional blankets and things. So it definitely feels like everything is geared up for winter walking. Definitely not summer walking and certainly not heatwave walking.
But we had a, we still had a really good day though it's been one of those funny days. So we got up and were really looking forward to going to the wine fountain. The iconic fountain where you turn the tap and the free wine comes out and we got there like right on time, 8:00, o'clock like the gates open. There are a couple of people waiting. We turn the tap and like a few dribbles and stuff come out. And then nothing. Yeah, it's annoying cause it's one of those things that I've seen. It's like, “ohh, I really wanna go there. I really want to get some wine from the fountain. Like that would be so cool.” Even though it doesn't have to be good wine or anything, I just think the concept of that and providing that for pilgrims is so cool and so nice. It was one of the things on this walk that I picked out is like, I really want to do this. So it was a little bit unfortunately where it's located just being about 3 kilometres out of Estella so, with Estella being a main rest spot. Walking another 3 kilometres after you get there to go and see the fountain in the evening and three kilometres back, it's a lot of extra walking in the middle of a heat wave at the end of the day when you actually want to drink some wine. Yeah, and going first thing in the morning, it opens at 8:00 AM and a lot of the people at the moment in the temperature are actually leaving at like 5am / 5.30 / 6am in the morning, so they'll be well past there by the time it actually opens. But yeah, we got there just before 8:00 o'clock. Heard the church bells ring… No wine, no wine. The water tap was working, which was good, except we didn't need to fill up water. But yeah, a bit disappointing. Yeah. So right. I mean, no one turned the water into wine this morning. No, we were really looking forward to all of those joke / comments we could make – at least someone was quoting Life of Brian while we were standing there. We didn't have a blessing this morning. We waited for 20 minutes, which at that time of day is like, you're losing 20 minutes of cool weather. So it was a little bit of an unlucky start, but I think like I said, like the scenery was just so incredible. We found this town that I really liked. Villa Mayor, it just seemed like very quaint, so we were kind of, “hmm, maybe we could own one of those houses or renting one of those houses”. They have nice gardens and nice verandas and balconies and things. And in the afternoon, when you're hot, you're looking at, nice green garden with shady trees and fruit trees and like, oh, they've got their balconies off the side in the shade, so nice. It looks like quite a posh town, a slightly posh town, so I was quite attracted to that. and that was also. The last point where there are any kind of services for the next 12 1/2 kilometers, yeah. So the next 12 1/2 kilometers after that, we're literally just walking through the through the wheat fields and the and the vineyards.
Yeah, so it's incredibly scenic, we actually met the Civil Guard and so they are called the Guardia Civil or Civil Guardia, I can't remember which way around it is. They were just saying that if you run into any trouble at any point on the Camino, you can call 062 and help you, which I think is really good, particularly you're traveling alone. I never even knew this existed. Basically if you need help as a Pilgrim, you can just call them and they'll help you. That's really handy to know, that there's someone there that will help you.
Before we left Los Arcos, we stuck our heads into the church there because there are these – I only just learned this word – are a retablo, which is basically instead of stained glass windows. It's almost like a built structure of. Like, I don't know, how would you describe this relief sculpture, it’s like the whole wall of sculptures and paintings and filigree. It makes me think of something of like the Labyrinth or Dark Crystal, slightly like Jim Henson type figures. Can you imagine if muppets popped out of all the little nooks and crannies and like sang the hymns, that would be the coolest thing ever.
Yes, we arrived right before 1 o'clock mass, coincidentally. So it's really nice, like all of the sort of, I guess elderly Spanish locals in the town were all dressed up. And it's Sunday – that was why everyone was going to church. I forgot it was Sunday when we were there. It makes a lot more sense now. So it was actually really quite busy and it was all very sweet.
Then having to do that last like 7 kilometres and just you can just see the heat waves radiating off the ground. I didn't think we'd be the only people, though. We saw two other people. Yeah. And there are other people who are staying here who also started from Estella this morning. They just left earlier, and arrived later. The guy who was sitting next to me at dinner was in Estella as well. But left early and arrived hours after us.
I recommend this, this location we're in because it's owned by this one guy. The only downside was I accidentally mentioned that Gaven was in tech, so he was asked to fix the Internet because there was an issue. But you did your like Pilgrim’s duty and gave him a hand, which is very kind. Yeah, which is fine, you know, the owner and the one guy who works here have been super friendly. He made us a really tasty dinner. I have no problem giving a little bit of my time to nice people. It took 5 minutes anyway, it would have taken about 30 seconds except Windows was in Spanish, and I don't speak a lot of Spanish. So there's a few wrong clicks going “Where the hell is the device manager?” Isn't it just like Los Internet? No, it was lost internet..
Anyway, it's been a good day. I mean my main thought today was even though we were a bit like unlucky with the fountain, given we've been looking forward to it, I still feel so lucky that we're here right now. I know it's been a bit of a difficult day, but actually it feels like the right place at the right time and everything. Not difficult, so much. I think it's just been strenuous, but tomorrow we have a short day. Yeah. But anyway, I was just saying that I feel like very lucky. And it's just interesting that most of the people we meet are either young students or retirees. Or people who've gone through some traumatic experiences like death or divorce. It’s like we’re doing this the right reasons and at the right time and everything, it feels very right and natural. So anyway, I'm just really, really enjoying, really enjoying this. It's so good. As you say, shorter day tomorrow, so it should be more chilled, though it's another day of heatwave, right? Yeah, another day of heatwave. It's currently predicted to break the following day. And then we'll have a much cooler day of only around 36 degrees. It will feel much better. It seems like during the week is dropping back down to low to mid 30s, which is a bit more normal Spanish summer weather, I think.
So anyway, we'll see how we go tomorrow, we just need to try and survive one more hot, hot night. Yeah, overall good day though. I'm just hoping that a little tiny bit of breeze starts. I'm looking at the trees out the window and they are not moving at all. It is dead still outside and all I need is just the tiniest little whisper breeze to just move the air. Well see you in the morning. Alright, that's it for today.
OUTRO
Thanks everyone for listening.
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Buen Camino!
