July 23, 2018
I don’t have a lot to report today on observations or anything else. However, it was very, very hot, and it was the longest day for mileage so far. We walked 19.34 miles on the Camino de Santiago.
We left Pamplona and a little over one half of the way to Puente la Reina we reached these wrought iron silhouettes of Medieval pilgrims at Alto del Perdon which the highest elevation on today’s walk.
Tomorrow will be another hot day but it will also be a relatively short day.
For your information, I stayed in a hotel last night but am staying in an albergue tonight that has a pool. That was nice after a long day in the sun today.
By the way, I forgot to mention something that was fun for me yesterday. We walked on the shoulder of a highway for a short distance. I made the decision to start waving enthusiastically at the cars that drove by. Most of the drivers and passengers would wave back. That helped make it more memorable, and it gave me a lot of joy to see them wave back.
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See additional photos from July 23rd below:
Brief descriptions of the photos:
This image is a marker in the sidewalk that also serves as a guide to pilgrims as they walk through villages and cities.
Here is a wheat field along the trail. The wheat fields made me think a lot about growing up in Nebraska where there were a lot of wheat fields.
This image is of the Camino trail along fields of wheat
A view of sunflower and wheat fields along the trail
A beautiful sunflower field along the trail
Astrid, Julia, and Tanja from the Fellowship along the Camino
The trail with a wheat field on one side and a sunflower field on the other
The trail would take us through this village on our way to to "Alto de Perdon." You may want to google it.
This small snail on a weed struck my fancy so I took the photo.
A view of the trail
A marker along the trail
Here is the trail leading up to the "Alto de Perdon."
This is Alto de Perdon--a wrought iron representation of medieval pilgrims with heads bent to the west wind. An inscription nearby says "Where the way of the wind crosses the way of the stars." In "The Lore of the Camino de Santiago" by Jean Mitchell-Lanham, Jean writes “The sculpture exhibits a small history of pilgrims and the pilgrimage…through various stages of development, from the beginning in the Middle Ages up to the present day, in the form of a procession. Of the twelve pilgrims, the first pilgrim appears to be searching for the route and symbolizes the beginning of interest in the pilgrimage. Next is a group of three that depicts the growth or rise in popularity of the Camino. These three are followed by another group depicted as merchants or tradesmen on horseback that symbolize the medieval era of merchants hawking their wares to the pilgrims. Spaced away from them is a solitary figure that characterizes the decline in pilgrimages due to political, religious, and social unrests from the mid-fourteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. At the very end of the procession are two modern-day figures depicted to show the renewed interest and rise in popularity of the pilgrimage in the late twentieth century.”
Me standing with the sculptures at Alto de Perdon
Tanja, Stéphane, Julia, Astrid, and I are standing at Alto de Perdon
Alto de Perdon
A village along the trail
Walking on the trail
A church in a village along the trail
This image is a scallop shell marker in the sidewalk that also serves as a guide to pilgrims as they walk through villages and cities.
This image shows the diversity of the farmland through which we walked.
Another church in another village along the trail
Here is the trail going through a village. You will note the blue tile with the scallop shell image which is another marker pilgrims watched for to ensure they were on the trail.
A metal sculpture of a statue along the trail
Another church in a village
A church steeple in Puenta la Reina. Many steeples have plants growing on them as well as nests of storks.
This is the steeple you saw in the previous image.
This is a small pilgrim statue outside a store in Puenta la Reina.
Here is a bridge outside of Puenta la Reina. I plan on trying to get a better image tomorrow morning.
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