Albergue de Peregrinos de los Padres Reparadores, Puente La Reina. 17.00.
At last, after nine days of having practically the entire Camino Aragonés to myself, I have joined up with the pilgrims on the Camino Francés. What a change it’s been! Puente La Reina is much the same as it was when I was last here, some six years ago, but it is a lot busier. A lot. There must be nearly a hundred people in this albergue alone, and it’s not even the only one in town. Still – it’s good to see other people again!
I left Monreal shortly before six this morning, which, in retrospect, was a mistake. I probably should have left half an hour earlier, given the distance (another 31km day today). It was quite a trek, and most of it under the sun.
I bade farewell to Aragón two days ago when I crossed the border into Navarra, but today was the “real” goodbye, as the mighty peaks of the Pyrenees slipped beyond the horizon for the last time. I shall miss them. I overtook the seventy-eight year old pilgrim Mari Carmen for the last time and then the road was mine, for perhaps the last time in many weeks.
I was not entirely alone. A fox raced along the path ahead of me for a short distance, and a small herd of deer had come down from the sierra to feed. They looked up as I walked by but didn’t seem all that bothered. I guess they’re more used to pilgrims in this part of the world.
The Camino skirts the northern edge of the Montes de Valdorba, the last of the pre-Pyrenean sierras before the great open fields of the Ebro floodplain. Along the way, it passes a number of immense limestone quarries, like the Canteras de Alaiz: great, gaping wounds in the mountainside, sometimes laddered like a pyramid, sometimes sliced in a perfect square, and sometimes belching great pillars of dust into the morning light like something out of Tolkien’s fiery pits of Utumno.
A similarly industrial hellscape met me on the other side of the AP-15, the busy highway connecting Pamplona and San Sebastián with Zaragoza. It looks like they’re extending the road out west, so I was glad to have the company of Robert Harris’ Conclave for a time.
The final two-and-a-half hour trek across the fields west of Tiebas were tough, as the sun was already high and the forested slopes of the sierra were quickly becoming a distant memory. There were butterflies absolutely everywhere: little blues, skippers, commas, red admirals, painted ladies, marbled whites and the odd swallowtail. I suspect they were less troubled by the heat than the birds, who were keeping mostly to the shade, their beaks open and their chests rising and falling quickly.
La Iglesia de Santa Maria de Eunate was noteworthy in that it was the first albergue of the Camino so far which was A) open and B) had a stamp for the credencial to offer. I made a promise before setting out on this pilgrimage to pray for one soul in particular in every church I found, so it’s a tremendous source of relief when I can go inside, rather than having to genuflect before the door, under the sun.
After what seemed like an age – and with the audiobook reaching its final line only just in time – I suddenly realised that I recognised the Camino I was walking, because I’d done it before. The Caminos converge just after Óbanos (where I picked up another stamp), and from there it was a relatively easy march to Puente La Reina. My legs were beginning to tire, which is not entirely surprising after two 30km+ days back to back, so I was greatly relieved to reach the albergue merely minutes later.
And here we are! I’ve already met a number of interesting pilgrims: Ruby, a gap year Physicist from Kent; Max, a Salzburger who set out from his front door three months ago; an Irishman who teaches English in Shanghai; a Finn with a penchant for Spanish girls; and Amaya, a Basque girl bound for Logroño.
And Puente La Reina put me right, food-wise. One of the bars offering a menu peregrino had sopa de ajo on the menu, so I was drawn right in.
There’s a pilgrim’s mass at 7.30pm, so I’ll try to make for that – I remember it being very friendly the last time I was here. Here’s to a highly sociable few weeks! BB x
The Book of Barnabas 