Month: April 2026

When we order the mixed salad here it almost always comes with white asparagus. I’m sure we’ve shown some salad photos with it. We don’t like it, kind of mushy. Green asparagus is harder to transport and has to be picked before it goes to seed. We heard it was grown underground. Betty, last night, mentioned how they grow it.

They just cover it with black plastic.

Today we were chatting with a guy from Oxford and related the story. He said he did not know there was green asparagus. So it must not be common in the UK either.

So I have to relate my favorite, and only, asparagus joke. At a dinner with shared food a plate of (green) asparagus was being passed down. On getting the plate a woman took a knife and sliced off all the tips and put them on her plate. The next person was shocked and asked why she had done that. She said, “Oh, the tips are the best part, didn’t you know?”

The yellow arrow is, of course, the Camino marker. The white over red blaze is a marker for a GR route. The GR routes are all over Europe and several follow the various Caminos.

This year we started seeing these along the Camino

I am referring to the bicycle-1-3-arrow part. I left the rest of the sign for interest. It seems the EU has a number of long bicycle routes. They must be fairly recent since we have not seen these before. Some follow the Camino, like the GRs.

Making sure the perigrinos know this.

EuroVelo 1 is the Atlantic Coast Route, running from Norway down to Portugal.

EuroVelo 3 is the Pilgrims Route, which follows historic pilgrimage paths from Trondheim, Norway all the way to Santiago de Compostela.

Did I say “long”? I meant “looooooooong”.

Miles walked: 9.6 miles

Floors climbed: 67

We had a small breakfast provided by our B&B (Casa Tau). A mile or so past Larrasoaña we passed Hotel Akeretta which was where we stayed on our Camino in 2013 and found out, after we had checked in, that it was the hotel where Martin Sheen stayed in the movie “The Way”. If you’ve seen the movie it was where Martin Sheen met the blond woman from Canada and where he caught the hotel owner pretending to be a bull fighter.

As mentioned in my previous post, I got behind in my daily logs.  Shoot, it’s hard to remember all I’d like to remember about the day.  I do remember we were concerned about all we had to do when we got to Pamplona: 1) Go to an optical shop so I could replace a broken ear piece on my reading/computer glasses. 2) Reorganize all our stuff and mail a small suitcase to our endpoint (Sahagún which is half way to Santiago). It held things we only needed on the plane.  3) Do laundry. 4) Buy Kleenex and cough drops (my sore throat had turned into a cold).

On the edge of Pamplona we decided to catch a taxi to shorten the day’s walk a bit and get to our errands. We had stopped in a bar for coffee and an amazingly helpful woman in the bar called a taxi for us and then walked us to the place to meet the taxi since we were in a pedestrian area.

We got to our hotel (Hotel Yoldi) and checked in and headed up to our room.  On the elevator, uh oh, Charlie realized he didn’t have his phone.  We remembered he’d had it out on the taxi so figured he probably left it there.  But, we couldn’t call the taxi driver since we hadn’t called him ourselves.  We rushed back to the front desk and asked them to call the bar where they’d called the taxi.  We were panicking and not thinking clearly. The hotel desk person suggested the obvious thing: Why don’t you call your phone? We did and the taxista answered!  He was rather far away by then but he brought it to us when he was nearer to our part of town  It cost us an additional 7 euro taxi fare!  Worth it!

We had a nice lunch in the hotel restaurant while waiting for the phone to show up.  Then headed out for our errands.

Miles walked: 8.3

Flights of stairs climbed (equivalent): 22

As you can see, there was only 1/5 as much elevation gain as yesterday so a fairly flat walk today. There was a lot of downhill at the beginning and then it was gently rolling hills. Gentler than usual. Nice!

There are no towns between V de M and LA so that made the walk seem long. But there was a food truck with chairs and benches so we were able to get a cold drink, an orange, and rest our feet a bit. The food truck didn’t have a bathroom and it was wide open country so … I had to be creative to find a place on the trail.

Post by Wynette:

Taxiing: about 4.5 miles

Walking: 3.6 miles, 2 hours and 23 minutes, up 427 feet, down 531 feet

Note by Wynette: I started this post several days ago and then ran into problems uploading the photos. It took a couple of days for us to resolve this problem, plus we had a couple of very busy days. I got behind on our daily logs. I hope to slowly fill them all in! Of course, the dates are going to appear out of order.

The stretch of walking leaving Linzoain is famous for being treacherous when wet.  Extremely steep downhill, rocky, muddy, and slippery. Much discussion about it on the Camino forum we read. Weather forecast was for overnight rain, 100% chance, for several hours.  Charlie and I decided we didn’t want to risk it. So … we called a taxi to take us around that section.  Of course, it might have been the first time we’ve ever seen here when it didn’t rain when there was any rain at all in the forecast.  But, I didn’t mind missing that section, even if it didn’t rain much after all. 

We told the taxi driver, “Take us to the closest bar to the Camino in Zubiri.” We had a nice coffee there and then headed out, starting on the Camino at Puente de la Rabia where supposedly people would take their rabid animals to be cured (by walking around it somehow, even though the bridge is over a good-sized river, at least by New Mexico standards).

Miles walked: 9.66

Flights of stairs climbed: 101

Only about 1/10 of a mile walk to and from lunch place so most of that 9.66 was on the trail.

We really enjoyed our stay in Villatuerta last night in a beautiful private room with two good beds and a window! Slept well, got up early for a simple but nutritious breakfast (coffee, boiled egg, yoghurt, toast) that had been left for us in the albergue. Chatted at breakfast with a man from Phoenix who complained quite a bit about Trump while we ate. (He was a republican.)

Got on the trail by 7:15. We’ve been trying to leave early in the cool mornings so we don’t have to walk as much in the afternoon sun. It’s been in the mid 70s and very sunny the past few days. The sun is quite hot when you are in it with no shade, especially going uphill. We are glad for the partly cloudy forecast tomorrow.

It was a pretty walk through green rolling hills. Tonight we are staying in Casa Rural Montedeio. We stayed here in 2013 and 2014. Worth repeating! It is now run by a family from the Netherlands. We will have dinner tonight with the family and any other guests who opt to dine with them. 17 euros each.

Miles of walking: 10.5

Floors climbed: 82

Calories burned per my Fitbit app: 2429

Coffee and a little ham and cheese and bread breakfast was served at the albergue between 6 and 7 so we got a very early start!

What a beautiful walk out of Uterga. Charlie took this video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ncp25ZE4gdrigUW9A

There are big fields of mustard plants. I assume these are farmed and not just weeds. Solid yellow color. At first I thought they were rape plants (canola) but close up we were able to identify them as mustard.

We are definitely in farm country. Starting to see huge fields of wheat (I think) and also starting to see vineyards and even some olive trees.