23/05/2024 – Walking the walk 5

Day 8 was the sibling of yesterday: a long, unshaded road (29km today), without steep climbs (just enough to heat you up and make you pant by the top!), made pleasant by a cloudy sky. Nevertheless, the UV was palpable. I was in long pants, long sleeves, hat, having burnt my calves yesterday and my arms a couple of days ago. We are firmly in Rioja now: red earth and old vineyards. The great woody bolls, bonsaied for decades, are sprouting into zingy, lime-green, bushes. They are trimming the vines right now and wrapping promising tendrils onto the wires.

As I write, I’m soaking in the bath (score!). Water still hot after rinsing the clothes… Carey, the consummate napper, is sparked out on the bed.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my 5-year “all clear”. On May 22nd 2014, I was signed off drug therapy and assigned back into the “normal” population (at least from a cancer perspective, feel free to dispute all other categories!). That’s not to say today was an entirely healthy one. The rain and warm weather have spawned a hive of bugs and buzzy things. I woke up this morning with 2 great lumps on my face and neck where something had snacked on me. Of course, Carey was unscathed (I could say “snubbed” by discerning critters, but – ouch!). Then, Inevitably, strolling along through a marshy bit today, I was the Old Lady who swallowed a fly!

Day 9 was a “rest day” – 23km on a wide dirt road through the fields. Carey snagged a long drone flight, while I tried to capture an adequate shot of the corn flowers which have appeared along the side of the trail.

We took a leisurely breakfast and had the time to pose with the “medieval” aunt sallies set up by Najera cathedral. Carey looked quite splendid!

As we were ambling, we chatted with a lot of people, whom we had passed and greeted since St Jean-de-Pied-de-Port, but not tarried with. We are fast walkers. It’s not rudeness. We all have an “efficient” pace. It’s important to go at your own speed on long days. Everyone gets that. In fact, we had already established connections, shared jokes, even before today’s longer conversations.

We passed through the semi-ghost town of Cirueña. During the “noughties” boom times, private developers constructed a residential new town, complete with golf course and swimming pool. Then, the 2008 financial crisis struck. Building stopped/was abandoned. It never re-started. I guess one in every eight completed houses is occupied. Apparently, the golf club supports a regional sports scene, but Cirueña is too close to Najera for much pilgrim business, except pit stops at its one café. You feel the ambition, the implied wealth anticipated for the area… It is a strange, “white elephant” of a place.

I had thought we were “poppied out”, but there was one exceptional field that stopped us both: most intensely scarlet, with fresh, densely-packed plants – just, wow!