La Casa del Cofrade Albelda de Iregua

... didn't experience on this visit.

In La Rioja tourism is developing rapidly, but its still not at the levels on other parts of Spain. Go before it becomes so !

I hope that if you are considering visiting this area this blog has been of some help, and if not that you enjoyed reading it anyway. My next trip is to the celebrations in Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, but thats short so its probably next year before I blog again.

... owning family, and in Lopez de Heredia although the tour was given by a highly able young employee from the UK we had the pleasure of meeting the 76 year old owner on our way out, the third generation of the owning family.

Each visit was interesting and you learn something new, and what was particularly exciting today was the extraordinary contrast between the small modern winery at Remirez de Ganuza which just produces high end wines, and the large, very ...

... easy but we spent lot of time walking on a road! we prefer the pilgrimage by walking on footpaths... since that day we hate walking on roads!

Navarrete is a small village with a charming refuge and all the services u may need (supermarkets, ATM...)

... cities in the Camino, we visited the whole city in a few hours cuz is a little bit small. We finished our first walking week in this city so we made a farewell party in c/Laurel, the most famous street in Logroño, many people get drunk that day... i don't know how they felt for walking the day after that party...
We will come back in my next free week to continue the camino from Logroño to Burgos...

This stage has no difficulties, the landscapes begin to change, we left the woods behind us and we begin to see beatiful fields til we reach our destination.

In Los Arcos I don't recommend the main refuge... when we were there we saw lots of bugs, an unpleasant smell, a small kitchen... the village is not very impressive but the main church (worth to see)

We'll remember this stage for the amount of mud we accumulated in our legs. It was an awkward day, at least this stage was pretty easy but the beginning (a huge climb with a lot of mud).

We founded the main refuge in Estella newly renovated, clean, with all the facilities... a nice place where we met people from Italy, Germany and New Zealand , we decided to cook together a huge tipical spanish omelet!!! We also took a walk around beatiful Estella despite of the pain in our legs!

It's the strangest thing. I didn't think much of it the first time it happened. I was just looking at the view (having a rest) on the first day, on my way up to Orisson, when it happened. I looked up and there they were; this big fluffy flock of sheep. Long wool, curly horns. So I got up and moved out of the way. It happened the next day too though, at Roncesvalles. There I was sitting by the road ...

Today was as uneventful as it was hot. A long, hard slog over the Atepuerca Massif. Dan and Andy have begun to resent my lack of injury, and I their lack of appreciation for resillient feet. Last night we played guitar and sang for a pretty large audience of fellow pilgrims, as well as the gorgeous French refugio attendent, who gave me 2 cents for our performance and said it was better than watching fireworks as a means of celebrating Bastille Day. Too ...

... From your niche, you can then jump out to run in front of and alongside when the bulls come by or just watch and then follow them in. I did the latter, choosing a spot that I could see the corner and had a great view of a guy going down, who I later learned was removed by stretcher (the newspapers report each aid call, the name of the bull who caused it, where it happened on the course, whatever they know about the victim, and helpfully compile statistics over the course of the ...

We managed to escape Pamplona with our lives, and with Andy, though Dan did have his camera stolen today. Well, not his, per se, but a friend´s. The three of us have retreated to a beautiful and spacious albergue a few miles west of Pamplona both in order to insure we´ve a place to stay beside the ground and also to get a jump on tomorrow´s 900m elevation extravaganza. End communication. Grant