day 30 – draft Thursday, 5 May 2016 Zabaldika to Uterga

day 30 – draft

Thursday, 5 May 2016

Zabaldika to Uterga

24 km today - 86 km on Camino Frances - 808 km to date

Up with the early group, who leave just after 6h30.  I get a comfy spot and recreate a missed blog, review others, uploading as I go, then send an advisory email to all.  With breakfast, another chat to Amanda, photos with many, including the staff, I leave just after 8h30.  The suburban areas of Trinidad de Arre and Villava are encountered.  Once I cross the Arga River there is a long but delightful stroll through Villava: nice wide tree lined streets, good looking apartment blocks and long bendy busses and arrows in the way at very regular intervals, even when crossing a road.

Then I get a glimpse of Pamplona's Cathedral up high on the edge of a cliff.  Cross the River Arga by a medieval bridge, climb a road through the ancient walls and fortifications and enter into a modern medieval town.  It is clear this is a pedestrian precinct where cars and smaller delivery vans coexist on a mutual footing: it just feels great.  Modern in the sense most five storey (or so) buildings in an area roughly a kilometre square appear to have been built in the last 30 to 40 years.  Medieval in the sense street layout seems preserved: some are in more or less straight lines, some slightly wavy and some in gentle curves.

I meet a middle aged woman, whom I had seen on and off over recent days, who goes home today.  I learn she started at Le Puy five days after me.  She says she will return to Pamplona next year and continue to Compostella.  I congratulate her on such a fast trip and we part.  At the Tourism Office I meet Santosh from India, now living in Ohio and Stephanie from Milwaukee.  I get connected to Orange's Spanish network for text messages and data.  Then to the cathedral where I say the Morning office to learn it is Thursday and Ascension Day.  The structure itself is quietly straightforward with the ceiling bosses decorated.  There are pews down the centre of the nave then wide side aisles with chapels beyond that again.  In all those I look at there is a retable on the wall behind the altar: these typically have three or four rows with five panels in each row.  Each panel shows, often in relief carvings highly decorated, a biblical scene, a biblical character or a saint.  These retable, very common in Spain I discover, serve a similar purpose to the highly decorated tympani I have seen in surrounding a major entrance in abbeys etc in France and Italy.

On leaving, I grab some fruit, cheese and a drink for lunch today and tomorrow from a .shop in a modern building in the old town.  After leaving the original town I am in a modern scene of wide straight streets and modern buildings, stopping in a botanical gardens for lunch.  Crossing over an arterial ring road, a single line railway and a motorway, I pull up into Cizur Menor.  First encounter is with a chapel that is all that remains of a hospital established by the Knights of Saint John of Malta many, many years ago.  On the outskirts of Cizur Menor I stop to try my luck taking photos of the windmills along the ridge line of the Sierra del Perdon range: the Camino climbs up from here and down the other side: a young male walker comes across and offers to take one with me and the range behind.  We get to talk: he is Dan from Chicago.  He also struggles with being east and south from here, or any other geographical hints as to where my home country is.  We part about 14h40.

The pull up from Cizur Menor is strenuous in the heat of the afternoon and I stop near a cemetery just before the village of Zariquiequi for porridge, orange, banana and water.  As I enter the village, the two that had vigorously applauded as I entered Larrsoana the day before are ensconced outside the bar.  They, and others with them, applaud vigorously as I stride past.  I had thought of stopping here but the reception, though well meant, serves to hasten me on.

I continue up to where the way crests the Sierra del Perdon, festooned with silhouette figures cut from sheet steel.  Here I take some photos and carry on.  It is now about 16th and I am a little anxious about a bed for the night.  Uterga is about 3 km away down an infamous steep pathway.  My pocket book lists one albergue in Uterga with 16 beds and six people passed me as I took photos.  The next albergue listed in the pocket book is another 11 km on.  I start the descent gingerly as it is both steep and covered with loose pebbles.  Then I notice “streams” of slightly clearer ground and follow those at a better rate.  Then comes the obstacle course, a flight of “steps” formed by large squared off logs (like original railway sleepers, only bigger) with a high but manageable drop to the next step.  Using my walking pole to steady myself I try several and it works so I go down in grand style.  Then more streams through the loose pebbles and Uterga with two albergue opposite one another to choose from.  The one I  choose has 22 beds alone.  And even several hours after I arrive is still accepting walkers.

Wash clothes and have a meal.

And so to bed.