Day 4: September 24

The best tasting pizza since 1971!

Cizur Manor to Muruzabal

I awoke to another sunny morning. A fabulous start to the day. Plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast for once.

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When I went back to make final preparations to leave, one of the ladies in the American Seniors group was struggling to pack her sleeping bag and she was saying ‘Well this is the third time I’ve tried this and I still can’t get the goddamned thing back into the bag’. She was making the classic mistake of folding the sleeping bag quite neatly and as compactly as she could manage BEFORE putting it into the stuff sac. ….just like I used to do and it rarely works as well as it ought to! So being a helpful Brit I just had to politely suggest to her that it would be much quicker just to randomly stuff the sleeping bag into the stuff sac until the whole thing is snugly contained within it. After all that’s why it’s called a stuff sac. So armed with this new insight the lady was able to pack the sleeping bag in double quick time….whilst uttering ‘Gee….I sure wish I’d known that years ago, it would have saved hours of my life’!!!. So with the good deed of the day already done I departed and stepped into the radiant morning sunshine. Today’s objective of Muruzabal would mean a shortish walk of about 10 miles and it kept me well clear of Puente La Reina which is the end-point of the Brierley guide book stage for this part of the Camino.

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The principal feature of this day’s walk was the passage up and over the Alto del Perdon, the high ridge whose profile, replete with wind farm towers, dominates the southwestern skyline when viewed from Pamplona. It is also one of the truly iconic locations along the Camino Frances. The thin metallic figures that adorn the crest of its summit are features of every recent videolog that has ever been taken of this part of the route. It’s always really good to get outside after a night in any albergue and get back onto the ‘road’ and breathe in the fresh air. It was about 08:20 when I got under way. Because Cizur Menor is a small place I was quickly through it and back into the countryside. The Camino route was very obvious as it stretched away into the distance heading for the wind towers on the Alto del Perdon and with groups of peregrinos already strung out along the route. It was along this first part of the day’s journey that I witnessed ahead of me the first obvious evidence of peregrinos going to ‘the toilet’. So obvious and so funny really. It is an aspect of the Camino that I feel sure bothers many of us before we embark upon it. ‘What do I do if I need the toilet in the middle of the countryside?’ is a regularly asked question on the Camino forums for first-timers planning to walk it. Back in England I normally have to go to ‘the toilet’ once on a 15 mile walk but it’s quite easy to find somewhere private to attend to a call of nature as there are usually very few other people around. So far on the Camino and with the grace of God I’d been ok during the day. Instead it had been in the middle of the night at around 03:00 – 04:00 when nature had called out to me, in the various albergues that I’d been in. To add to the fun, at this time of day, the unwary peregrino has to endure the shock of the automated lights in many of the albergues switching themselves off after less than two minutes or so. It’s all a veritable voyage of discovery!

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It was on this first stage of the route that I came across for the first time Kath and Teresa two American ladies, one from Colorado and the other from Alaska (though I’ve forgotten who came from where!). They recounted the tale of their baggage that had not turned up where it was supposed to have done the day before. There are several baggage handling schemes that operate along the Camino whereby anyone can arrange for a small fee to have baggage collected from one location and delivered to another one further along the route. But, like anything, this noble service can go wrong occasionally. I’d already decided that my mochila would go with me anywhere and everywhere unless some as yet unforeseen disaster were to occur. On this occasion I empathised with their situation and told them I’d pray that they become reunited with their precious belongings at some time later this day. I did a lot of genuine praying on this Camino! There’s just something about the environment that inclines you that way.

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Halfway up towards the Alto del Perdon lies the village of Zariquiegui with the Iglesia de San Andres at the entrance to it. Though a tiny place, the shop and bar and the outside tables made it an ideal and quite popular place to have a break. It was here that I had my first (of several) heart-stopping moment when I temporarily misplaced my yellow document bag that had contained the money-wallet, which I had with me several minutes earlier when purchasing some food from the small shop opposite the church.

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I always find it surprising how, in such circumstances, the normal functioning of the brain is so effectively disabled that the item you’re trying to find could be right under your nose yet you still wouldn’t notice it. I did find the wallet shortly afterwards, but only after having had to go back to the shop to ask them if I had left it behind in there, another advantage of being able to speak the language. About 5 minutes afterwards the German music group turned up ‘en masse’ at a table close by and so it was really good to see them all again. They had been the one common link in my Camino so far, from the evening of the first day in Roncesvalles right through to now, fate and destiny had brought us together each day.

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Very soon their table was replete with beers, they had obviously been working hard on their priorities. Great Stuff. Great for the local economy too. Upon setting off from this idyllic repose I teamed up with a Brit by name of Steve, who had arrived at the table where the music group were seated and had been talking to some of them. I’d noticed Steve’s ‘scouse’ accent which for the benefit of non-Brits means he’s from Liverpool or the area very close to the river Mersey. The Beatles were ‘scousers’ for example. This next stage of the Camino was the final stage of the ascent onto the top of the Alto del Perdon which was quite straightforward, for me at least. Steve was an English Language teacher and was living in Pamplona at that time. I imagined many of his students would end up speaking like John Lennon. On the top of this Alto del Perdon it was very windy (a great choice for the wind turbines) and extremely busy!!! I did just manage to get a half decent shot taken by the metal figures but it was very busy at that time of day which I believe was around noon. There was a great view of the city of Pamplona to the north east whilst southwestwards there was a view of the new terrain into which the Camino would be leading all of us in the next few days. I had been really pleased, as someone not exactly ‘au fait’ with social media, with my smartphone that I’d decided to buy in readiness for the Camino. But someone back in England had noticed that I hadn’t as yet sent back any photos featuring myself. So I was now under (fairly) strict orders to address this oversight…which is why I now begin to adorn the blog with mugshots of myself. Sorry about that.

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Steve noticed that I was carrying a pair of super lightweight ‘flip flops’ on the outside of my mochila.

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He said that I would have to be careful doing this as further ahead along the Camino sentiments still ran quite deep concerning the events in the Spanish Civil War and loyalties hereabouts were quite mixed depending which town or village that you were in. So I rather tactfully repacked the things inside the mochila. The descent from the Alto del Perdon was described as being steep, loose and stony. Time for the super compactly collapsible and extremely light Black Diamond walking pole to be unpacked for this one. It wasn’t too bad to be honest, with a little bit of care. Years of pilgrim feet have created a broad stony swathe of a track in which you’re free to pick your own route of descent through it. But my everlasting memory of this part of the Camino was talking about football with Steve. He was an Everton supporter, but for me it’s Leeds United. Apparently his father had been a Leeds fan so he had a bit of a ‘soft spot’ for them. Incredible, here I was on the Camino this famously ancient route of pilgrimage and spiritual salvation but instead talking all about our two football clubs with a fellow Brit. ¡Asi es la vida! As the descent from the Alto del Perdon bottoms out we enetered the village of Uterga where Steve recommended the local bar/cafe (Camino del Perdon Albergue) with its many tables set outside bathed in the day’s glorious sunshine. It was about 13:00. Steve was obviously well known to the staff in there. My choice for lunch was one of their pizzas…a strange choice I suppose bearing in mind that I was in Spain.

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To cut a long story short it was THE best tasting pizza I have had since 1971 when I had my first authentic Italian pizza in Lido de Jesolo. So much so that I had to go back inside and thank the two rather attractive sisters that according to Steve seemed to run affairs inside the cafe. At the same time I couldn’t help but wonder yet again how my sense of taste and smell had now been thoroughly restored in contrast to the situation in England where both these two senses had scarcely functioned for a couple of years. All the time that I’d set foot in Spain, in Santander, both senses had come back to life, literally. Is there really some ‘power’ given off by the Camino? Whilst we’d been eating Steve had given me a bit of a colloquial Spanish language lesson in how to ask for ‘a pint of beer’/’glass of beer’ in the various regions of Spain that the Camino passes through. After this enjoyably informative lunchtime session we proceeded along the Camino as far as Muruzabal where I’d already decided to stay in the first albergue (el Jardín) on the left as the track enters into the village and so I took my leave of Steve.

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The albergue was very nice and had an outdoor pool! It was also a chance to speak Spanish properly with the proprietress (another Alicia!) and having arrived quite early I was one of the first to arrive. It was warm so after a couple of cold drinks I showered and washed some clothes, then organised the mochila. It’s amazing how disorganised the items in the mochila become after a couple of days. So this particular afternoon was a perfect opportunity to get a grip on things once again…..and to relax and chill out big time. I’ve done enough running around in life so now was the time to do the exact opposite. It was a time to enjoy the simple pleasure of doing nothing and not feel the slightest bit guilty about it. I had subscribed to the communal meal at 19:00 and the smell of the cooking was quite delightful as the whole thing was being prepared. Later that afternoon the German music group turned up again. We were clearly destined to be together. The meal was fine and I remember being lucky enough to be left with a side plate full of unused roasted peppers. Absolutely delicious, worth being alive for! That evening there were about eight of us in the dormitory.

Thought for the day

1. It had to be the pizza. Two things to note:- (1) the exquisite taste of the thing, (2) how thoroughly grateful I was that the sense of taste and smell had been restored. I’m aware of a rich heritage of reports made by peregrinos of ‘odd’ things that have happened to them whilst walking their caminos. Because of such things there has always been talk of a certain ‘power’ associated with the Camino….the very thing that has attracted peregrinos to it for over a millenium. It’s the same desire to explore and experience a part of such a ‘mystery’ that attracts travellers to sight the dinosauric water ‘monster’ in Loch Ness in Scotland, to discover the legendary paradise of Shangri-La, to search out the source of gold in El Dorado, etc. Many of the ‘odd things’ reported can be classified into the categories of colourful/fanciful imagination, coincidence, all of which require the observed ‘facts’ to be filtered through the mental processes of the observer, i.e. they are subjective in nature. But the fact that both senses of smell and taste have been restored is independent of any subjective processing on my part. They either work or they don’t, it’s not something that you imagine is working or not. Maybe it’s just a rather massive coincidence that after six days in Spain that the sense of smell and taste were functioning perfectly. Will they continue to do so? There’s still plenty of Camino to be walked over yet.