Pilgrims on the Way

As you walk past the MAGNA site near Zubiri, the Camino drops into the valley. In other places, there would be a winding trail (or sometimes a steep goat-climb) to get you down. The thoughtful folks at MAGNA put in a series of flights of steps. With the rains, the channels at the sides of some of them were full […]

The Camino is not all bucolic farmland, charming villages, and beautiful churches. This is the site of Magnesitas Navarras S A, or MAGNA. It’s a magnesite mine and smelter, producing magnesium oxide for the steel industry. The Camino wends its way alongside this scar on the land for a long while after Zubiri. Signs warn you not to leave the […]

We left Zubiri a little after dawn. Although it wasn’t raining yet, it would soon. This is Francine just after we crossed back over the Puenta de la Rabia. The sign, like most signs in Navarra, is in both Spanish and Basque. I love the look and sound of the Basque language, possibly through a sense of whimsy. Note that […]

Our doughty pilgrims arrive in the town of Zubiri! The last part of the road to Zubiri was one of the more difficult parts of our Camino. Three years ago, it was exhausting. This year, with the rain and the delays caused by the rain, it was downright dangerous. The descent is long and steep and strewn with rocks and […]

This is the statue of Saint James the Apostle (Santiago) at a side altar in the Collegiate Church in Roncesvalles. I’m showing this photo slightly out of order because today is the Feast of Saint James. Happy feast day! Here, Santiago is in his guise as a pilgrim, walking with us every step of the way to his tomb in […]

One of the things that I love about the Camino is the sheer amount of random medieval stuff. Some of it is obviously copied rather than genuine – like this planter box, I suspect – but this is a society keenly aware of its history and culture. I spotted this as we walked through the village of Espinal looking for […]

It rained on that second day. It rained on a lot of the other days as well. It pretty much rained on us for a month. I love this photo because that solid stone slab of a bridge reminds me of the rock that is Christ, which carries us over all obstacles – even if the rain does fall on […]

When you walk 20 or 25 km a day, you need a lot of fuel. Normally, we took second breakfast at the first village we came to. Later in the Meseta, this wasn’t always possible, and we took a picnic second breakfast. On this, our second walking day, we stopped at a place called Bar Fronton in Burguete, the very […]

This is the photo that everybody takes. We are standing at the highway sign at the entrance of Roncesvalles, just at the very beginning of the Spanish Camino. You can see the Camino path off to the right. It’s a perfect photo to post for Francine’s birthday. Happy birthday, darling! From here, it’s 790 km by highway to Santiago de […]

Before leaving Roncesvalles, we stopped into the thirteenth century Royal Collegiate Church of Santa María (Real Colegiata de Santa María de Roncesvalles), which is where the Augustinian friars who live here worship as they have done for 800 years. Back in 2013, I had been privileged to be at their Pilgrims’ Mass, where three old friars chanted the psalms of […]