Despite sleeping on a Floor with 89 other pilgrims I had a fairly decent night’s sleep. The 3 gentlemen in my cubicle didn’t snore, or at least my earplugs muffled any extraneous noise, so I had a restful, if not sound sleep. At 6am a melodic chanting music was piped in as our wake up call and the lights came on.

So I got up, packed up, and went outside – it’s pitch black at 6:20am!

Many pilgrims headed off in the dark, no doubt trying to stay ahead of the herd and secure a bed for the evening, but as I had a reservation I had no need to hurry nor risk life and limb walking in the dark. I sat on a bench for almost an hour, trying to blog, and finally set off when I started to get too chilled to sit any longer and the sky was just lightening.

I walked with my headlamp for the first mile, this was my view….

3kms later, with full visibility, the Camino passed through the cute little one street town of Burgete, full of stone & whitewash buildings with window boxes overflowing with red geraniums.

We dipped out into the country for a bit and the temperature dropped dramatically. From 15°C at Roncesvalles it hit 6°C!!! I was freezing! I stopped at the next open bar which happened to be in Espinal and was pleasantly surprised to find a fantastic smorgasbord of breakfast pinchos (plain & chocolate croissants, mini croissants of smoked salmon and ham&cheese, lovely cakes, fresh fruit & juice,etc) and James Brown in full 70’s disco attire playing on the TV!

Immediately after my breakfast I came upon Tom, a first-time pilgrim from Kansas City who was at my communal dinner table last night. We got to chatting and I ended up walking with him for the next couple of hours chatting about everything under the sun.

And the sun did shine rather strongly as the day progressed! We had a good long rest at 15kms, spending much of the time trying to find him somewhere to stay tonight (everything this side of Pamplona, 30kms further, was booked!) but by 1pm it was approaching 27° and I’d still 8 kms to go. I said goodbye to Tom at that point and I started to make tracks to arrive before the heat got any hotter.

Fortunately most of the Camino was on a shady forest trail of varying surfaces, including a couple of very steep, very rutted descents, but the last 5 kms was in full, debilitating sun.

My albergue is in a small town called Urdaniz. It’s a bit off the Camino trail, too small for a bar or shop but it does have a 2-star Michelin restaurant!! A fellow pilgrim and I considered going but at 90euros a pop and 14 plates of food we thought we’d likely fall asleep before we ate our money’s worth, lol! This albergue has a honor-bar and does a meal too so we’re more than set for the evening.

Update: the albergue served a fantastic communal dinner last night! I think we all moaned in anticipation when we sat down to a gourmet salad as our first course, and the main of roasted chicken and potatoes beat anything that 2* place could have served us! The wine flowed freely and we had lots of laughs sharing our earned camino stories. An international group: pilgrims from USA, Canada, UK, Korea, Spain, France, Germany, and Australia!