900km on the Camino Frances: Through the Navarre region

late summer river ford

Two long days of slogging up steep hills and down steeper ones, and we are more than 50km further in our Camino.

As we see a few others limping, or with taped and bloody feet, or scrapes on their faces form a fall, or bound knees, there is so much we can be thankful for.

The weather is superb. Cool in the morning, before the sun comes over the hills. We pass fields of cows wearing copper bells, staggeringly strong horses with their colts, sheep and chickens and rabbits and geese and even a pair of peacocks. Bird song in the trees, which have changed from beech to oak. Hawks of some sort occasionally fly overhead, and we like to think they are Peregrine Falcons, which they might be, and which would be appropriate as the word ‘peregrine’ has the same root as the word “pilgrim” (”peregrine” in Spanish).

The Peregrine falcon has one of the longest migrations, covering 25,000km in a year. A few centuries ago, the word peregrine also used to refer to someone coming from abroad, or travelling. It still can be used as an adjective meaning to have a tendency to wander. Not so far from the modern word pilgrim as being someone who travels to a holy place.

Although everything is still so verdant and green, there are a few brown leaves on the path and the hedgerows are full of red and black berries shining in the morning sun: hawthorn, rose hip, elderberry, bramble, and so many more I do not know. The grasses are damp with dew, but there are still wildflowers abundant in pink and blue and yellow and white. The architecture changes from the red-shuttered white Basque houses on either side of the border, and are now of natural stone, with some ironwork and dark wooden shutters. The classic ones are substantial, three storeys and quite square, with the livestock traditionally sleeping on the bottom floor, the cooking and living quarters above, and sleeping rooms on the top floor with its tiny windows, to keep the winter heat in within thick, thick walls.

By noon it is getting quite hot, and we are usually scrabbling up some steep trail, or down a muddy track that follows a river. Every once in a while we stop for a glug of water, and nod to those who pass by, everyone linguistically united in the one common phrase “Buen Camino”, even though we say it to the same people sometimes several times in a day. There are Scottish and Irish and English and Welsh walkers, Americans and South Africans and Canadians and Hungarians, Koreans, Danish, French and Spanish, in four days we’ve become part of a small international force.

We don’t really feel integrated into the Camino way of feeling yet. My dreams have all been unconscionably stressful, despite not really have anything to be stressed about. The only task I have to do each day is to walk from one point to another. I am still living in my head, thinking of things that happened quite recently or of things to come, or making up things. I come out quite frequently to breathe in the air fragrant with pine trees and leaf mould , to take in a lovely rural scene, or focus on not slipping down some steep slope and gravel.

But as we came close to Pamplona, walking on city streets among traffic didn’t jolt me out of some reverie or intrude upon my thoughts as I had been warned it might. I quite liked the buzz of life. Maybe it’s because it has been only four days of walking, and getting used to this routine and seeing how my body reacts to the length of time we walk. When I was a girl, my big toe broke during a game of sock soccer in our hallway when I kicked the warm air vent trying to get the ball away from Dad. Oddly, I am feeling it a bit now, and achy little patch of toe. Also the concavity on my right side, there due to my scoliosis. My quads are tight and every once in a while I feel a slight twinge of a hamstring. Little flickering lights of amber, but nothing so concerning that a half hour of stretches or bed yoga can’t help.

By the end of our second long day, as we gratefully ambled under the arch of Pamplona, hot and sweaty and tired and a little sore, we were grateful to leave exploring the town until tomorrow and get clean and rested instead. Two of our walking mates end their Camino here, and it was lovely to be able to share it with them, and congratulate them on their success as we contemplate our next phase. We have a day off tomorrow, for laundry and rest. And Pamplona waits!