Day 11 - Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada (23km)

Leaving Najera

Today was a slow day. It was not that I was tired, it was just that today was a day to savour; the Camino stretched ahead under a crystal blue sky peppered with clouds; the red-brown landscape of gently rolling Rioja vineyards which yesterday had seemed dull and tedious was today brighter and more open and inviting; and off to the south, some 40 miles distant, you saw the snow capped peaks of the Sierra de Cebollera. Even the strong and cold breeze simply added to what was an uplifting morning.

Today I walked mostly with Paul, an English guy I had briefly met when leaving Pamplona, although there were also a couple of other people I chatted to from my early days of walking. After resting a day in Logroño the

majority of familiar faces are now a day ahead of me. I had been made acutely aware of this yesterday; I arrived at a cafe on the outskirts of the small town of Ventosa and before long it was full and bustling with fellow walkers, overflowing onto the streets. Previously this would have become an eternal round of greetings and farewells and story swapping with those you had met from the outset of your journey but I did not recognise a single face. In some ways it was strangely isolating - I felt like the new kid standing in the playground on the first day of a new school - and it highlighted the strength of the bonds and friendships that I have formed in only a short time.

After lunch (in a very strange, half-built ghost town of a place perched on a hill) I pressed on alone to the town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada where Robin had arranged an apartment for Janna, Keith, herself and me. Today's Camino cock-up: the keys to the apartment were not in the lock-box by the flat door. After a confusion of phone calls and messages and the owner coming over it transpired that another group had been incorrectly let into the flat earlier in the day (as it turned out it was the two Austrian couples that I met on my first day so it was nice to catch up). With everything finally resolved we decided opening the 'emergency' bottle of wine was fully justified....

Cathedral - Santo Domingo