Day 4 – australia day

Renay Weir
Sep 6, 2017
4 min read

30km. 8 hours. Pamplona to Puerte de larena.

My feet burn. We walked 30 km! In the scorching sun, up hills, through golden fields, down rocky paths, up more hills, up more bloody hills. We’d stop for a break in the shade of trees when we could.

As we set off in the dark through the streets of pamplona we stopped for a coffee and pastry (seriously so so so so good) then as we were walking with all the pilgrms descending on the same path from different parts of the city, i ran into nicolas and raphael who i had met on day 1. So i walked with them for a while. Nicolas was leaving this morning to continue on the camino norte so it was sad saying goodbye. I then walked with raphael (Austrian, 23, med student) for about 8km till we caught up to the others. I seemed to have met half of australia today. i look ahead of me at these two grey haired pilgrims and there plastered on their bags is the australian flag, another boxing kangaroo patch, their wide brimmed hats also bearing the flag. I catch them and its Ken and Jenny from Glen Innis. Now that was an australian accent if i ever heard one! 77 and 75 they are doing the camino for the 2nd time. It was like wearing a comfy jumper being around ken and jenny. Reminded me a bit of uncle Neil and aunty Pixie. It was Like being around your grandparents, they were checking youre ok before the next words from ken… ‘struth i need a pee!’ So off he hops behind a tree. We chat about beaudesert the coast and then ken tells me the secret to being able to walk the camino is ‘dont smoke, dont drink and have lots of sex’, to jennys groan of distain. ‘Oh Stop it ken’. I then leave them and would keep running into them over the course of the morning as we all struggle up the hills. We past fields of su flowers which unfortunately had all finished flowering, while wind turbines lined all the hill tops above us. We made it to the top of pilgrims hill, a place ive seen so many photos of and wanted to get to for a long time. We had a group photo then looked over the vast countryside that lay ahead of us to walk over the next week. We start the long walk down hill and it was here i was approached by Neil… ‘You Austrayan?!’ So then for the next hour im walking with 60 year old psychotherapist neil from sydney, hearing all about the problems with australian politics. Groan! I even said i needed to stop and put sunscreen on (even though i just applied it) in the hope he’d carry on but no. I eventually see my fam waiting for me so stopped off and said goodbye to ‘every second word is f***ing’ Neil. I keep running in to the family from toowomba and then just as i arrived at this Peurte de larena i see ‘aussie dad’.

It was a long hot day! And your feet are burnign walking on rocks. We got to the 25 km mark and we had 2km to go but there was a side option of walking another 3km extra and seeing an old octagonal church. So Hellmuth and i headed off down the road and let the others carry on to the next town. The church was impressive but for an extra hour of walking, im not sure it was entirely worth it, except for the company and a break from the main trail. The path eventually re connected with a town and so we stopped at a bar for a coke and a boccadilo. It was 3 and we hadnt eaten since 7am. Best coke and bacon, cheese pepper sandwich of my life! We sat outside continuing another half hour or so on to the town where the others had checked into an albergue. I had a shower, did my handwashing and went straight to lay down on my bed. My feet hurt. Im tired. But its that feeling of absolute exhaustion in the best way possible. I had a half hr nap then went for a wander thru town. It was so quiet as it was ciesta time, the smells of fresh laundry, perfume and randomly bird seed as i walked through the empty streets. I ran into Katherine, an actress from the UK. We-d passed each other heaps of time along the way but never had the chance to introduce ourselves so we finally did in the street. and we decided to grab a beer an sit out in the street. We sat for an hour or so watching life go by before heading back to the albergues for dinner. All the italian guys were there cooking pasta in the kitchen so went and had a look. They were spooning the sauce into my mouth to taste, or more to show just how good their cooking is. they asked me to eat with them so we sat outside in the garden eating pasta, drinking red wine and me more just enjoying watching them all so passionately talk to each other. Somehow weve all agreed on walking through the night instead of during the day to see the ‘la luna!’ in a few days time so will see how that goes…

Cant seem to upload photos so ill try in the morn R x