Day 5 - Pamplona to Puente la Reina (24km)

It was 5.30 yesterday morning when fellow travellers started getting up in the hostel. It began as a trickle of people trying to show some consideration to fellow sleepers and soon became a wave of twenty to thirty who couldn’t care less as the whole dormitory came to life. I just wanted to sleep.
   

Again it seemed pointless to go against the flow so once the initial rush was over I got up, sorted my bag and had a slow and simple breakfast with the final five people who, like me, were not after a ridiculously early start. I left just before 8am with Keith and Janna, the Canadian father/daughter couple, and we set off through the quiet Pamplona streets for Puente Reina some 24 kilometres away.

The road from Pamplona

Once out of Pamplona it was a steady morning's walk through wheat fields, ascending to today's high point where there is a superb sculpture of pilgrims on the skyline and fantastic views across the region; you could see in the distance, red amongst the green, the two tiny villages that lay between us and our destination.

It was a much slower day than yesterday, a combination of an entire day of walking in the open exposed to the heat of the sun and an afternoon of walking with Keith, who at 75 has the right to be a little slower than me. He and I arrived at Puente Reina at 4pm and headed out for a well deserved beer from where I fell into the company of Rob - the Canadian ex-Navy man turned priest who knows an ex colleague of mine - and his companions. It went downhill from there....

Puente La Reina

        

Puente Reina ('the Queen's Bridge') grew up around the impressive bridge built here in the eleventh century by a local queen to benefit pilgrims crossing the now much wider Arga river. It seems a quiet town and there certainly seemed little open last night. However, I did manage to find a wine supplier to replace my 'emergency bottle of wine' that I had shared in the Pamplona hostel. I can’t recall now what we agreed the emergency was that led to it being opened but I’m sure it must have been very serious....