Saturday, January 01, 2011

Day 5 on the Camino – (More) Bikers, Cirauqui, and GPSing Our Way to Hotel Yerri

Sunday, September 26th – 13.6 miles to Estella

Here we are getting ready to start out on Sunday morning with a pride of bikers on the Puente la Reina behind us.

Of course, Kathie had to get a pic of the hams – I mean, bikers.


Over the next 5 kilometers, we ascended about 375 vertical feet. Cirauqui is a medieval village at the top of the ascent. (Those are grape vines and olive trees in the foreground.)


We sat on the ground to eat lunch in a quiet area almost half way between Cirauqui and Lorca, then encountered this medieval bridge over the Rio Salado (Salt River).


Here’s a heart rock for Joan – Kathleen noticed it on the ground by the bridge.


Walk, walk, walk - a little bit along busy highway, then through Villatuerta (I just love that word for some reason!) and on to Estella, which – with a population of 15,000 – was one of the larger towns along the walk. According to the book Iberia, Michener just LOVED Estella, a hot bed of Carlists. I kept waiting to see him sitting in some sidewalk café, but I was really too busy trying to find our way to the Hotel Yerri with Kathie tracking along on her GPS behind me…plus the fact that he’s been dead for 13 years.

Tomorrow, on to Los Arcos.

4 comments:

Katharine said...

OK, now you have to post the photo of those gams with their broken down bike(s) about 2 hours on as we passed them on foot.

And did we ever figure out what were those standing stones around here?

Pat said...

Uh, Kath? I called 'em hams, not gams. Was that a Freudian slip by any chance?

And which standing stones would those be? Up on the hill to the left? Wasn't there a cemetery there?

Charlestonjoan said...

Love all the hearts! Now you see them everywhere!

Pat said...

We even had Kathleen looking for 'em, Joan!