New shoes for the Camino!

 Hello, everyone. We went to our local Fleet Feet store for their anniversary party and found our new trail runners for hiking the Camino.

These are Speedgoat 5 by Hoka. For a wonder, they aren't nearly the same exact color as my first two pairs were...don't know why, but that turquoise blue shad was the only thing available when we were shopping those years. This time it's more of a powder blue. The green second color is pretty dominant when you see them in person. The shape of the top of the tongue is different, it has a kind of dip just where your foot bends forward with the steps, and it's thinner.

As y'all can tell, we're looking forward to our next Camino walk: the Via de la Plata. (This was supposed to happen in 2020, but like a lot of things that spring, the trip fell.) This starts in Seville and goes either to Astorga to join the Frances or to the trail head of the Sanabres which goes through Ourense and joins with the Invierno (Winter) route of the Frances. We're planning to take the Sanabres option.

(On the blog maintenance front, the phone is still acting up on posts. I tried emailing Blogger and got an auto-reply from Google that "this email is no longer monitored" or some such. This though they're still peddling the Blogger app for downloads and giving that as the contact email. What is wrong with these people? And why did they break my app?)

 

My Dirty Girls

 Hello, everyone.

Today I want to show off my wonderful sand gaiters: an outer layer that keeps rocks and sand from getting into your shoes.

This is one of my pair of Dirty Girls. There is a little hook, visible here, and a little bit of hook-and-loop, not visible, at the back of the shoe. The lady's shop has a number of different patterns in the fabric, I chose the Camino one as y'all can see. 

While on the Camino Primitive, we met a lady from Germany who also has Dirty Girls, in a black and red sort of splash or flame pattern.

They work. Aside from a couple of bits of weed that worked their way up the side once, I had no foreign objects get into my shoes. And there was a lot of dirt, sand, and gravel to cross! 

This is also a closer view of the Speedgoat 4 shoes that were written about in my last post.

The most comfortable shoes we have ever walked in

 Hello, everyone.

Today I want to talk about our shoes. We walked in Hoka One One Speedgoats. These were new, and we loved walking in them.

We had chosen them in the first place because (1) they have the Mega-grip soles and won't slip on wet stone, and (2) being trail runners, they weigh less than our previous shoes did. 

They also breathe--this was wonderful--at the end of the day my feet were not soaking in a puddle of perspiration the way waterproof shoes always worked out.

We had no blisters on the entire pilgrimage.

At the central milestone in Madrid, at the end.

At lunch time on the Hospitales portion of the Camino Primitivo. (Yes, that is a toppled marker stone being used as a bench. It was toppled when we got there!)

Training report

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday we did our first long walk of the year: all of the Mission Hike and Bike, over to Bentsen State Park, around the road loop inside the park, and back along the Hike and Bike to the truck. We estimate it was 14 miles. The converter told us that works out to 22 or 23 kilometers, a reasonable day's walk, in just under 5 hours. Of course that was over flat territory and mostly pavement.

The feet are fine. The boots and sox worked well together.

For me, that was a pair of Injinji liner socks in the new Merrell boots that have the Megagrip soles. Tee shirt and shorts, of course.

We are refining wardrobe decisions in preparation for departure.

I think I will take my pair of zip-off pants and a pair of shorts, and the Icebreaker merino tank dress for evenings. (It's light weight and dries fast.) A total of 3 pairs of the light weight Injinji socks, two light weight low cut ones and a liner pair to wear as a regular sock pair. 3 pairs of undies. Probably 2 tank tops that can be under layers, 2 bras, 2 tees, 2 ripstop long sleeved shirts that can have their sleeves rolled up. The pink fleece, the windbreaker, the Buff or the Infinity Buff (not both) and the hat and rain poncho.

Further items haven't been settled on yet. Certainly the new sleeping bag will go, and the fabulous bag that covers the backpack on the plane, and of course the poles. The new dopp box.

Training report

Hello, everyone.

Training report, and shoe comments:

Monday we did 6 miles on the Hike and Bike. Today (Friday) we did the whole monte: from the parking lot all the way to Bentsen State Park and back again. We're calling it 9.75 miles. Or 10 if we want to just claim it! (about 16 km)

Weather was fine: clouds with spots of sun, temperature around 70, wind. As we started walking about 7:45 there were few bikes until later on.

Watched a flock of six or seven Roseate Spoonbills flying over head, in a straight line, probably heading out to find breakfast.

The mesquite trees are in bloom and smell very nice as one walks by.

Scads of mosquitoes next to the walled subdivision that the trail curves around approaching the state park entrance. Those folks need to go on a standing-water hunt!

When we finished, about 10:35, I had a hot spot on the bottom of the foot. Probably need to track down something like Leukotape. (Or at least some kind of tape that neither comes off nor squashes the adhesive through the tape fabric onto my socks. That is near-impossible to get out again!)

I'm liking most of the things about the new shoes. One thing I don't like is that the second top-of-opening hole pair is gone. I used that second pair of holes with the pair that's still there to secure the heel-lock knot so my toes wouldn't hit the front of the shoe. The new hole alignments mean the lock knot is lower and squashes the top of the foot. (Medium to high arch issue) Going to see about adding back the hole that is gone.Should be able to just drill it out, right? And add some Fray Check to secure the opening? What do y'all think?

(See picture of the shoe on the highlighted post, I'm changing to the new-shoes post for that today.)

Training report: 1st 3 days

Hello, everyone.

Friday we went over to the Mission Hike and Bike Trail and walked 4 miles. (Approximately 6 km) Took approximately 1 hour. (The link goes to Trail Link, who claim a total one-way length for the trail of 4.8 miles. But if you park at one end and go to the other and then go back to your car, it's pretty near to 10 miles. And there are mile markers here and there for shorter walks.)

Saturday we went to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and climbed the rope bridge twice and the tall hawk tower once. Possibly a mile in walking, plus the climbing.

Today we went to Bentsen Park and walked the main loop and strolled up the ramp of the hawk tower. Probably 4 miles.

Not much in pictures for the three days--the birds aren't in the mood to pose. And camera-hunting the birds takes up time without giving fitness benefits, so since we're trying to get back into walking shape we're doing more moving and less sitting in front of bird blinds and feeders.

Shoe report: the new shoes (Merrell with the Vibram Mega grip soles) are working out well, and when they get their new insoles they will probably be super-great. 😊

Sock report: it looks like liner socks--size Medium--for me. The medium thickness (size Small) socks last summer were a major contributor to toenail blisters. 😒 The thicker sock fabric between the toes meant that the toes needed more space in the toe box than they had. The thin liner socks are good. The thin running socks are just about the same thickness as liner socks, so I'll try them out on, first, the 7 mile loop at Santa Ana and, second, the 10 or 14 mile long walk (Hike and Bike the whole way and back, possibly with a loop into Bentsen, or twice around the 7 mile tram road at Santa Ana) sometime in the next month or so and decide if they go or stay. Injinji liner socks took me through Portugal in 2015, in a hot year for walking and only a few tiny heat blisters appeared. I don't know why I thought I should mess with success by trying out a new type of sock.

New hiking boots!

Hello, everyone.

As y'all know, we were forced to cut short our pilgrimage walk last summer. We did learn, however, that our standard-Vibram soles didn't cope well with wet pavement. In fact, both of us fell on that last wet day of walking.

Recently I saw an ad from REI talking about a newer version of Vibram: Mega grip Vibram. It's supposed to be more stable on wet pavement and rocks. After running the phrase through the ever-handy Duck Duck Go search, we figured it was worth a try. It couldn't be any worse than the old shoes, after all! The pilgrimage trails in late spring aren't expected to be any drier in future than they have been before.

Here are pictures of my new boots:

 From the side, it looks pretty much like the old ones, except for the color. It's still mostly dirt-colored, but then it's going to be going through dirt. I'm fine with dirt colored shoes.

 A look at the sole. The sole shapes seem to release mud better than the old ones. At least, the valleys appear to be wider or shallower than before so there aren't a load of rocks already imbedded from the first couple of walks in them.

The folks at the Camino Forum were saying that the Merrell people had made the toe box a bit roomier. I think they're right! My toes are grateful, too. But now it's time to experiment with lacings and socks. Here the upper criss cross has been omitted. This made increased room over the arch, but after the change the heel-lock loops were loosening. I have added a simple twist knot at the top to stabilize the heel lock knot. Y'all can see that the lace is going under the side of the lace before the actual knot so my heels won't slip and the shoe will hopefully not allow my foot to slide forward on the downhills.

I have stepped on wet sidewalks with no problem at all in these. Complete confidence, even though wet sidewalks can be a problem even when level. And DH was wearing his old shoes and felt the slip. I think I'm in love with the Vibram Mega grip soles!

A few comments on gear, now that we're home

Hello, everyone.

I found that I'd learned a lot about packing, and packing up in the morning, last year when I didn't think I was learning anything. I had certainly felt like I knew nothing at all! But this year, when we rolled out in the morning, the whole experience was better.

Last year, every time I needed the toothbrush, or the hairbrush, or to do my feet in the morning, it was an entire archeological dig to find what I needed, and then an entire project to get it all back into the pack. Usually followed by another dig and replacement session. There were morning where I just wanted to cry, it was so discouraging.

This year was different. We didn't have nearly the amount of unpacking and repacking, and we got out efficiently in the morning most of the time.

I had made a bag (8"x 8") just for medical things and secured it to the inside of the pack near the opening, so the Bufferin or the sewing kit were easy to find. The bag was mesh fabric, with a zipper closure, and had a strap with a snap to attach it near the top of the pack. There was a separate bag for bedtime supplies that came out as a whole and went back as a whole. This eventually was in another sturdy plastic store bag, but the basic system worked well.

Last year's sewing kit of a small plastic tube with thread and needles and the eyeglasses screwdriver, combined with a small scissors in its own bag, was replaced with a needle book type kit with a piece of felt to hold the needles and straight pins, a rubber band arrangement next to the needles for the screwdriver, and a card tucked behind the scissors case that held chunks of thread in various colors. The needle book worked out very well and fit nicely into a Ziplock bag for travel.

The entire shoe and sock setup was new, and the bright orange paracord laces were only the outside bit. I had new insoles in my old boots (Dr. Scholls Gel Work Insole for women) and 4 pairs of Injinji liner socks. The plan was to wear the Injinji under another sock, to prevent rubbing. That proved to take up too much space in the boot, and I ended up wearing the Injinji alone almost every day. They did wonders to prevent toe blisters. And even though I was now wearing a fairly thin hiking sock, there wasn't a lot of slipping around. The feet and the gel insole took up enough space to make it not be a problem. Next time I go shopping for hiking boots, though, I'm going to take insole and socks with me and try on the whole kit and caboodle at once in the store.

Making a shirt with a mesh back insert

I had fiddled around with scrap fabrics in my workroom and made an orange shirt with a mesh back and reflective piping. It would have been perfect, except that the thin orange fabric was moisture resistant, and so it was best suited to wearing in the evening.

The clothes rapidly ended up inside a sturdy plastic back from some store or another, and that proved to be a great idea. The clean-clothes bag could be pulled up to the top for access and then put back as a unit.

The walking sticks went, but they were never actually used for balance while walking. Instead, they were used to keep stray dogs away from our legs. One of the tiny villages outside Alviazere had 7 aggressive stray dogs in a pack, and we were very vigorous at waving the walking sticks! The dogs kept their distance. When we got to Santiago, we packed the sticks into the inside of the pack so they wouldn't be a problem walking in crowded places.

The sun hats were great, again, but by the time we came home they desperately needed a trip through the washing machine. They also provided comedy relief to people who saw us, apparently--this an unexpected bonus since we got them to keep from having sunburn on our heads.

The rain ponchos we used last year went again, but we should have sprayed them with some more water-resistance. Also, sadly, the stuff sack for mine jumped out of a pocket while we were walking through the outskirts of Coimbra, never to be seen again. (Now replaced by an orange stuff sack from shirt scraps of the nylon trilobal stuff. It's slippery. It would be a perfect stuff sack if it had a cord lock! Instead it has a slip knot on the draw string to hold the back mostly closed.)

We had no sleeping bags, having chosen to take only the Cocoon liners and a fleece to use if needed. The fleece came in handy as a second pillow if one wanted to read in bed, and after I fell and got a big bruise, as a warm cover to keep the healing going strong.

The plastic sporks came in very handy--no arguments about getting a yogurt to eat later, because the spouse was perfectly aware that, yes, we had spoons.

I used up the tiny bottle of travel laundry soap (it was a machine washing type, but if used in small doses worked fine in sinks) and ended up buying the smallest container of dish soap we could find. I could have used a partial-bar sized chunk of Zote, but didn't have one. The 10 foot piece of paracord and the clothespins came in handy. We made impromptu clotheslines inside bathrooms more than once.

We had packed warm clothes but rarely needed them. We wore tee shirts most of the time because this was the year that the Camino Portugues was hot. DH had a Duluth Trading Company Armachillo shirt that worked out very well for him. I had my old Columbia fishing shirt which was fine.

Shorts--oh the shorts. Oh, the chafing at first on the sweaty trail. Later on either the skin adapted or the heat wasn't quite as bad as the first three days of walking. I had also brought a pair of capri-length lycra type leggings. When the chafing was awful, I walked in them for a few days. It was chafing free, but had other problems. The leggings were too tight around the knee--maybe the calves were getting larger?--and made the joint sore. Eventually I tossed them. Lesson learned: be very careful about fit with the Lycra stuff.

Just because...

Hello, everyone.

While I haven't gotten photos from my camera to DH's Kindle yet, I have wirelessly gotten them into my own desktop computer.

Opening blossoms on my Queen Victoria Agave

My buddy.

Gaillardia

Psycho Cat

 We walked yesterday afternoon--yes, the heat of the day!--for about 5 miles. Got where we were going in just under 2 hours, plenty hot. Sat in pool for about half an hour afterwards. But it was a pleasant walk overall, on a collection of mostly subdivision streets all the way.
Gear conclusion I have reached: the Spenco insoles I got are just not right for me. I kept having odd and uncomfortable feelings inside my soles. Yesterday I switched them out for the Dr. Scholl's Work Gel insoles that I had in my schleppy tennies. This was a great improvement.

Training progress, what there is of it

Hello, everyone.

We have been quite spotty on our walks lately--waiting for insoles to arrive in the mail does that, I guess.

DH's insoles are still en route. My new ones arrived on Friday.

New insoles for boots. Also a pair of sox!

I was a little worried when I saw that they are labeled "wide" as my heel is narrow and my toes probably medium. But I pulled the old insoles out and these are the same dimensions in the length and width. Plus they have a heel cup that fits my foot.

Took a 4 mile walk yesterday with these socks and the new insoles. (That's about 6 1/2 km. for anyone counting in metric.)

Insoles in place--I had to loosen almost the entire lace on each boot to put them on.

Rose at a subdivision entrance, right by Bentsen State Park. One of the Austen rose hybrids?

Retama blossoms. This tree grows in places with lots of water and accepts a certain amount of poor drainage. I would think twice about buying any house in an area called "Retama View!"

Part of the Hike n Bike, between the bridge and Bentsen park. Road on right is W Military Highway, a trail once used by Gen. Zachary Taylor to patrol the US-Mexico border.

Silly nanny sign of the day: Bentsen State Park. It's a nature garden. It's outside. OF COURSE there are snakes in the area!

 The feet felt fine after the four miles. Next walk will be with the new insoles and the Injinji toe liner socks--which are thicker than pantyhose and I would say they do nicely as just a sock. Keeps the toes from rubbing so they don't blister in between the digits.

That next one will be a longer walk than 4 miles, as last year I didn't find out problems with my first pair of boots until we did a 10 mile walk. Four miles just isn't enough to find any problem that will develop with walking, in my opinion.

Camino de Santiago Walking Equipment: After Action Comments

Hello, everyone.

I woke up this morning before the alarm with my mind thinking about what I would say on this subject. Why disregard inspiration? The pictures of our museum visits in Madrid will still be there tomorrow. 

Some things I took and how they worked out:

My Kindle: I'm very glad I had my Kindle. Books I used on it were: airplane novels (re-read a couple I had on there by Jack Campbell;) Kelly's Guide to the Camino de Santiago (this wasn't just a map book, it had directions to the albergues in the villages and other useful information;) Gitlitz & Davidson's _The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago_ (wonderful, informative book--I bought the Kindle version because the paperback we had already purchased is too, too heavy.)  My Kindle is not the fancy Fire version with the internally lit screen. It's one of the classic models that requires external light. My son gave me a 1" long tiny flashlight which I attached to the zipper pull on the case.

Headlamp style flashlight: Not useful for me at all; shipped it home from Leon. I did see a man using it to go through his pack after bedtime once. The rustling had kept me from falling asleep right away.

Boots: I had the Merrell half-height ladies' boot, purchased at REI.com, in a half size larger than my usual tennis shoe size. I didn't realize this when I bought it, but this boot is a water-resistant style. It didn't keep out any water on the day of flooding rains. Nothing could have that wasn't a pair of fishing waders! But it did keep any moisture inside the boot with me from evaporating out. Like, say, sweat. Of course it had trouble drying out when it was soaked, but I could have helped that along if I'd had a clue. 

This was the second pair of boots. The first, in my regular tennis shoe size, gave me mauve toe on our first 10 mile training hike. But it didn't slide on my heel! This one had room in front, but it slides on my heels sometimes. Female feet, feh!

Shower sandals: I had bought a pair of cheap rubber flipflops at Wal-Mart. They are thong-style. The paint on the top surface began to peel off and stick to my foot toward the end of the trip. The thong gave me new blisters when I wore them all day long while tramping around Pamplona. If I were buying new sandals today, I'd buy a pair that doesn't have the toe strap, so I could wear them with socks. That way if things were just impossible (I am thinking of the day of floods here) I could take the boots off and hike in the sandals. When I wear rubber clogs to to gardening, if I get wet and have no socks, I get blisters. When I wear socks with the clogs, even though the socks get wet, I have no blisters. You absolutely need to have shower shoes of some kind, since you really don't want to go barefoot in the albergues. Too many feet with too many possible fungal spores! As you can tell if you stand downwind from the shelf of Botes. ;-)

Tummy meds: I took Pepto-Bismol. I also took Loperamide generic gel pills. The Pepto is my go-to answer to the bloating that turns into trouble if not attended to. You can take it when you feel the bloat starting and it will help fairly soon. The Loperamide you really need to take the night before. But how do you know in advance that you will need it? The airport in Dublin had no anti-diarrheal stuff at all in the airport shops. (This fact mystifies me still.) The Spanish pharmacies have never heard of Pepto Bismol and don't have anything similar that I was able to find. And I asked for it by the generic name: bismuth whatever-whatever. 

Pain meds: We left with 2/3 of a bottle of Bufferin. We ran out. The pharmacist had never heard of buffered aspirin. She sold us packets of Ibuprofen powder (really strong stuff!) to drink with water. Later on we got a tube of Ibuprofen gel for my sweetie's feet. This stuff is good, but they don't have it in the States. For some kind of equivalent here, you have to see a doctor and get a script. We bought Compeed while we were over there. This isn't sold at all in the US. (I have no idea why not.) It's a gel stick-on that you apply to the (unpopped) blister to protect it, make the pain go away, and help it start healing. In Spain you can get many, many sizes and shapes of Compeed. It works wonders for the top or side of the foot. Not the sole. On the sole it gets hard and is like walking on a shelf all day long. The gauze bandage with the stickum on the sides (fairly wide) that you cut to length, which was sold in the pharmacies, was good on the soles of the feet. I did cover it over with tape sometimes. (Adhesive tape) Scissors are useful and used. Take a pair that you can cut bandages with and trim toenails with. If you're taking a sewing kit, take another scissors that only cuts thread. (Unless you don't sew and don't care that you have to make three tries to cut the strand!) Speaking of sewing kits, you will be glad if you take a medium sized hand sewing needle and a bobbin of thread. You can repair your mesh laundry bag if you brought one--the mesh loves to let go at the side seams. I had a big needle but never used it. I had a screwdriver for glasses and needed it. You don't want your earpiece to fall off when you're three days from the nearest place to get a new screw.

Charmin To Go: I had about two-thirds of a roll of this on hand before we left, and I supplemented this with a three-pack of Camper's Toilet Paper from Wal-Mart. I am very glad I did. I put 2 rolls in my sweetie's pack and kept the Charmin container and the 3rd roll in mine. He sent his two rolls home in Leon. I kept mine. And since he didn't realize that it's a good thing to have, I took to saying "Charmin To Go for the win!" whenever I came out of the bathroom after needing to use it. Fellas, I gotta say this: we ladies have entirely different plumbing setups and surrounding areas, so we need to at least pat off every time we go. It's as important as being able to sit down is...though in desperate necessity we can hover, it's not fun. End of embarrassing digression. 

Socks: As I have mentioned before, socks became an issue for me. I took thick, soft, purpose-made Hiking Socks with me, and at the last minute I left home the Liner Sock pair that I had intended to pack because I was trying to get my pack weight below 20 pounds. (That is about 9.5 kilos for all you metric folk.) That weight includes the pack itself, by the way. So there I was with 4 pairs of socks, and when there was a washer and dryer to use, I used it. Mistake! All those "feels like buttah!" socks shrink like nobody's business when the hot dryer air and tumbling hit them. I should have taken 3 pairs of thin socks, most likely, and a pair or two of medium thick ones. They would have dried a lot faster (well, the thin ones would have) so I wouldn't have been all wound up on putting them in the dryer. The Altus socks I bought just before reaching Virgen del Camino are good, and I still have them. The Nike running socks that wick and are blister-resistant, that I bought at El Corte Ingles in Madrid are good and I wear them still, too. (They have separate right and left socks! And feel wrong if you put them onto the incorrect feet.) You can put a Liner sock inside of another thin sock if you need more fabric between your feet and the boot. You can't thin out a fat sock if your feet have gotten bigger than they were to start with.

Undies: I took the fancy Ex Officio panties, which are made of mesh. You don't want to sweat on your rump while hiking in these panties. They chafe. I wish I had taken my tried and true Breathe by Barely There ones--I can't even find this brand any more, but they're wonderful!--as I think they would have dried just as fast, and they aren't scratchy mesh, they're some jersey-like knit instead. Bras became an issue immediately. And I had taken two of the same model, a sturdy sports bra with Velcro-adjustable straps. The bra straps put up a territorial fight with the pack straps, hurt like the dickens, and were working on making a pressure sore on one shoulder. I had to quit wearing a bra. I can't say that "free-boobing" across Spain was the most comfortable thing I ever did. (And I'm not huge.) But I skipped the bra starting on about day 2 and didn't start wearing a bra again until we got to Santiago and I could leave the pack sitting by the bed all day long. Shipped one of them home from Leon, even. You probably want something with thin straps that won't make a miserable lump under the weight of the strap on your shoulder, but I don't know which brand or style to suggest. Anyone who has solved this issue is welcome to chime in in the comments!

Thin, lightweight, quick-dry shirts: One would have been sufficient. I had a long-sleeved "fishing shirt" that had straps to keep the sleeves rolled up and also a short sleeved one. They're not hot, really, but they don't retain any warmth at all on the cold days. And spring in the Pyrenees is not like spring in Texas. It's about 20F degrees colder! Or more. We plant our tomato sets in February in South Texas, and we don't need to put caps on them. The days are generally warm then. (Sometimes we have a late frost and cover the transplants for a night.) In May in Spain, we saw new tomato sets in the gardens and they all had clear caps on them to build a little warmth in the day and keep the frost off at night. You should probably look at the latitude of your home and compare it to the latitude of northern Spain when considering the clothing issue. I bought a fleece long-sleeved shirt in Pamplona at Caminoteca and it became my best friend for the next several days. The last week and a half or so, I didn't need it at all. But that is what happens when you walk during the change of the seasons.

You can see the pink fleece from Pamplona here. Also, the camera is hanging from my chest strap. The hat is tucked into my belt, with its stampede string looped around the strap. These are the zip-off pants. They were fine. By this time, I had begun carrying my water bottle in my waist pouch. I can't reach it when it's in the side pocket of the pack.

Jacket: I got a little don't-hit-me-green rain jacket from the clearance rack at the San Antonio REI store. My sweetie got the packs-into-its-own-pouch rain jacket from Sports Authority in the next town over from us. We layered these over our other shirts. Sometimes over more than one shirt.

You see the green jacket here, and the sticks. This was on Day One, the Route Napoleon. The pants are a pair of gray exercise tights, that got a hole in the back of the leg when I sat on the grass that day. They were PJ pants after that for a while, and then I tossed them.

Hat: I got a green hiking hat from Amazon and my sweetie picked up a bone-colored fishing hat from either Academy or Sports Authority. We wore them a lot! They had adjustable strings, so we could tuck them up under our chins against the wind snatching them, and they were squashable if we wanted to fold them or stick them into the pack.

Pilgrim water fountain at Estella. My sweetie's camera case is much smaller than mine. He's wearing a "fishing shirt" and zip-off pants and his hat.

Climbing the 12-degree slope to the top of the mesa after Burgos. The "fishing shirt" with the sleeves rolled down here, the hat, and that bright green bit is the rain jacket, tucked behind as it got too warm. Stick in carry loop on pack.

Rain poncho: We both had blue taffeta rain ponchos, the kind that have extra length to cover our packs. They have hoods with draw strings. The taffeta rustles. When I have it on, and the hood up, I can't hear anything behind me. I think this was a frustrating thing for faster walkers behind me during the early days. (I often stepped to the side at the next wide spot in the path to wave the faster ones on. It's just neighborly, after all.) I wore my hat under the hood of the poncho to keep the rain off my glasses. That worked out well.

Leaving Roncesvalles, with poncho, hat, and sticks. The monastery had a molded-concrete walk leading to the path.

Sleeping bag liner: This was useful. I didn't always tuck myself into it, because it was a bag and I had to worm myself into it after getting into the sleeping bag (which unzipped) and then straighten out the sleeping bag afterwards. But it did serve nicely as a pillow, and because it had a pillow extension at the top, it covered the pillows on-hand in albergues. I didn't sleep on the pillows without something. Often I pulled th sleeping bag up enough to cover the pillow. Then I tucked my camera and waist pouch into the foot of the bag to keep the weight of the sleeping bag from pressing on my toes. (Purple toes make you think of things like that.)

Sticks: My sticks paid for themselves the first two days. But after that, I concluded that they were too much for me to coordinate and were slowing me down. I had to find firm footing not only for my two feet but also for my two stick ends. People differ on this issue. But on the first day, buffeted by the tropical storm force cross winds on the steep downhill paths, the sticks paid for themselves. I'm glad I had them, even though they spent much of the trip in their little carry-loops on the sides of my pack.

Camera: My sweetie's camera fit into a pocket. Mine didn't. I probably should have had one like his. Mine was basically a cube shaped blob in its case. You can see it sometimes hanging from my chest strap in the pictures. 

Batteries: I brought swap batteries for our cameras (one each) and if the charge ran low in a cathedral, we swapped out to the fresh battery. We then charged the empty one that night or at the first opportunity with the 3-outlet travel plug. (I got that from Amazon for about $7. And then I wrote my initials on it.) We only carried one cell phone and its battery, in case we should fall and break a leg or something drastic like that, and we didn't use it from when we left the US to when we got back there again. And because my touch screen Storm BB kept trying to turn on inside the pack--jostled by stuff--I took the battery out of the phone and kept them together in their Ziplock bag in the bottom of the pack. After the second time I had to recharge the darned thing. I also used the travel plug to recharge the Kindle battery. I just plugged the proprietary charger into the travel plug. My sweetie had brought camera cable (the USB thingie to get the pictures out with) but we shipped that home from Leon, too.

Ziplock bags. Yes! But if you use it for your travel-soap bar, it will get worn and torn from all the opening and manipulation at the shower. So have an extra. The groceries in Spain do sell sandwich sized plastic bags, but I didn't notice whether they have waterproof closures or not.

And this post is really long, so I'll stop here for today.

Palas dei Rei

Hello, everyone.

We had a noisy night in Portomarin, because of ambient noises of one kind and another. I don't know why I noticed them so much this time. One was an alarm that sounded like a rooster.

Leaving Portomarin meant returning to the kind of hills and woodlots and small villages and farms that we'd mostly been going thrugh. No more views of the pretty river, sadly--we were heading away from it altogether.

My sweetie's feet were really bothering him now, because we'd had so many rocky surfaces to walk on. We could feel the contours of the rocks through our boots, and if we hit a rock wrong, we got a definite advisory from our foot. I dont' know if this was because the insoles of the boots were dead, or the boots were wearing out, or we were just a lot more noticing by this point. At times now, I was actually walking ahead of my sweetie.

Morning clouds have not lifted off for the folks in the valley yet.

Nothing says fun like giant metal ants in the patio!

Unless it's a hog's head with sunglasses on.

I find in my journal that I forgot to write for a key couple of days--these ones! And in my sweetie's journal, everything stops at Palas de Rei. (He was pretty tired by the end of a walking day.)

As you can see, Galicia is as green as the early part around the Pyrenees. Trail marker in distance says to go left.

 As you can see in the above picture, we were walking along the small roads a lot. There are some big highways through this area, and when the trail comes to it you have a confusing set of arrows that lead you in a spiral that ends in an underpass, and then carries on. The way through the small villages is used also by the dairy farmers taking their cows to and from the barn, so even though the village roads are paved you can't always see much of the asphalt through the dried cow pats. I did say dairy farmers: the cheese style that Galicia is known for is a really rich, really good creamy soft cheese. Almost soft enough to spread!

I learned a new word for drumsticks: "the hams of the chicken"

In Spain, while there are grocery stores, there are also frozen goods stores in many towns. They sell fish, and this one had chicken, too. This congeleria was in Arzua. The sale on drumsticks works out to around $1.50 a pound, give or take for the exchange rate.

If I remember correctly, Arzua was the place where the albergue put us in a "private" room. That is, the room was small and there was only one bunk set in it. Which racked terribly. And I finally got to eat some Pulpo a feria: octopus chunks, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with pimenton. YUM!!! We also tried Galician style tortilla de patata, which is a little bit softer inside. I don't know how the cooks manage that trick. Maybe they just run the stove a little hotter under the skillet, so the egg cooks firmer on the outside faster and lets the inside be still soft and almost like a sauce around the potato chunks.

The poster for the concert. I think Mr. Johansen was going to put out a DVD of the music. Notice the Galician spelling of the date: Xunio.

Arzua was also the town in which we got to hear the concert by the cellist Dane Johansen. It was delightful. Mr. Johansen, an American musician, was traveling the trail with his cello, a crew, and a load of audio equipment. (Obvious, he wasn't toting all that on his back on the goat tracks! It would have been impossible.) He had a project going, to play in the old churches and recreate the beautiful sound environments the way people would have heard it--so no artificial boost to the volume. I still heard him very well. One of the songs was a Spanish folk song (Catalonian?) which brought to mind the walking through hills and looking out over the valleys with their "ponds" of clouds below me.

Pamplona

Hello, everyone.
We spent two nights in Pamplona. Along with eating the Sepia a Basque (Squid with garlic/parsley sauce) we went to two museums, took a picture of the place the future Saint Ignatius of Loyola was wounded in battle, and found the camino supply shop Caminoteca. Where we bought me a pink fleece top so I could stop freezing to death. Caminoteca is a sweet little hiking supply shop--a selection of souvenirs, of course, some clothes for hiking in, and various books about the Camino. It's just down from the Cathedral and is well worth the stop if you, like us, are needing to pick up a couple of things.
Before the other pictures of the city, my sweetie took this of my feet:

This was all from the two days walking in soaking wet boots. They began to heal with the day of "rest" and no-boots in Pamplona. We wore our shower sandals all over the city. We also learned the value of taking Bufferin at bedtime to bring down swelling.

Pamplona has a lot of neat things to look at. We saw a cool sculpture of the bulls running:

You can also see in the background that many of the apartments have potted plants on their balconies. The northern Spanish towns and cities were full of lovely flowers, and often people who had only an apartment balcony cultivated beautiful pots of flowers there.
The place where, so to speak, grace struck Ignatius of Loyola:

Grace in the form of a cannonball, that is.
The Museum of Navarra had beautiful art on display, including beautiful floor mosaics, wall frescoes that used similar motifs as the floor mosaics from later years, statues of saints, and various altar treasures.
The Cathedral and the Church of St. Nicholas are both beautiful.
The Cathedral Museum had a very good exhibit on the history of Western culture. I learned that the Poema de mi Cid was written approximately at the same time as Beowulf. They also had archeological excavations that had been done there, which had uncovered a Roman village, now displayed with a walkway and some videos.
Many of the artworks from various village churches have been gathered into the museums in Pamplona, so you can see, for example, a great assortment of statues of the Blessed Mother all together and compare the different ways she is portrayed. Even in the Middle Ages, not everything was alike. Different villages had statues to her under different titles, and the anonymous sculptors certainly had different ideas of her face and the Holy Child, besides the customary clothing that is shown with the various titles (like Our Lady of Le Puy.)

Statues of the Blessed Mother, usually holding the Christ Child, from many churches in Navarra

Detail from a retablo showing thte Blessed Mother and many saints

Another retablo

The second night we stayed in Pamplona was Thursday night. This was the evening that we discovered the work week ends on Thursday, at least in Pamplona. All the prices at the bars and restaurants changed. Many more people were out and about for the evening--and the place we stayed was on the most "happening" street in the city! The last noisy drunks didn't go stumbling home until 5 am, kicking empty bottles as they went.
My sweetie's watch sounded at 5:30 am and we got up to begin walking again, in our newly-dry shoes.
We had about 716 kilometers more walking to reach Santiago.

After Roncesvalles

The next morning we woke to the light, about 6:15?, put our things back into the packs and our socks on our feet, went downstairs to put our boots on, and heard rain. With thunder.
It didn't have that pounding, rushing sound we associate with tropical downpours, so after we were booted and loaded up, we headed out.

Behold the fetching rain poncho! (My hat was under the hood to keep the eyeglasses dry.)
The rain was not bad at first. Then the heavens really turned the spigot to "flood." After a while the lightning came back (not that you could see it for the trees) so there was thunder to give variety to the rain sounds.
And then the hail started.

The village of Espinal, about 6.6 kilometers down the road from Roncesvalles, has a fronton court. (Handball court.) I had wondered why this was always mentioned in the guidebooks--then we staggered into Espinal in the midst of hail, rain, and more hail, and discovered that the fronton court was an open building with a roof, and no fence. By the time this batch of hail finished there were about 30 people huddling under the roof. And many of us had so much water in our socks and boots that we could remove the boot and pour water out of it. (I also squeezed water out of the toes of my socks.)
The white stuff you see on the roof across the way is hail piling up. The gray stuff on the ground around the tractor is water puddling. The water puddled a lot that day.
After a while it let up and we thought it would be safe to continue. Then about a half an hour later the rain started up again. It poured off and on all day. The trails were flowing streams, the water flowed over the toes of our shoes going up hill and over the heels of our shoes going down hill. We crossed over two streams that had a row of tall cement posts for fording that day.
Just before we got to Zubiri we had to cross a downhill slope that was nothing but rocks and slick mud. There was almost nowhere to put our feet. When we got to the bottom, I took a picture.

Somehow it doesn't look as impressive as it was to go down! But we made it into Zubiri about 2 pm, crossing over the Puente de Rabia, and settled into the municipal albergue. We had walked 22.1 kilometers: 13 1/4 miles. It was our first night in the bunk beds that would turn out to be standard sleeping arrangements for the Camino. It was my first night dealing with the blisters that would make much of my walk difficult and uncomfortable. It was also our first experience of slapping the dirty clothes in a sink, giving them a good squeeze, and hanging them out on a line to dry. (Or not.)
Fortunately the rain had stopped just before we got into Zubiri. To continue the good fortune, our boots that had been sitting on a picnic bench outside went inside before we went to supper, and our clothes were dry enough to bring in as well. It rained during the night, and people whose clothes had been left on the line overnight were in a real pickle.
We ate the pilgrim menu at the local bar: spaghetti in tomato sauce, chicken wings, soggy fried potatoe wedges, red wine and flan. This was my first experience of the standard potato side dish of Spain. I think they like their fried potatoes soggy like that, because they are everywhere.
In the morning, our boots were still very wet. We had no choice, however, and so we put them on. We started walking and discovered that there was no coffee shop, no bakery, no anyplace to get some foot to start out on. (The day before there had been a coffee shop close to the monastery. Cafe leche for two, and split a croissant with ham and cheese inside it--good start.) We walked down the trail and there was nothing in the way of a food place.
My sweetie had bought a small packet of Oreos and we ate a couple of those. (I hate Oreos. In the States they are always stale and horrid. The Spanish Oreos, however, were crisp and as good as two pressed wafers with Crisco icing inside are going to get.) About 9:30 or 10 we stumbled over a coffee shop and joined the mob scene as about 40 peregrinos tried to use the bathrooms and buy coffee and food in a place with about 15 seats. But we were grateful for the dry seat and the hot coffee! We met three Irish ladies, one of whom had lived in Dallas for a year. Later that day, they saw us again adn serenaded us with "Deep in the Heart of Texas."
And we walked on through another wet day, with a new perspective: at least there isn't any hail.
And I couldn't take any pictures at all, because when we had arrived in Zubiri I had discovered that my camera case was damp all the way through and the camera--and the case--had to dry out before I could take any more pictures.
They came up on us again from behind, and having seen my limping gait, gave me Compeed bandages for blisters. They were going to Pamplona to fly home, as their vacation was over. We thanked them, applied a Compeed to one of the worst blisters, and kept on. My pretty speckled Buff neck scarf was on my head that day. It decided it was embarrassed to be seen with me and fell off somewhere in the forest before we got into Pamplona.
We had walked  20.7 kilometers: almost 13 miles.
We knew there is a lot to see in the city, so we got a small room in Hotel Otona for 2 nights. This is a tiny hotel/pension over a bar on a street full of bars--all of which advertised pilgrim menus or daily menus. We had 2 twin beds, a shower all our own, and a TV. We took off our wet shoes and socks, napped, and wore our shower shoes for the evening. We ate Menu del Dia at a place that advertised Basque food. I had sopa de pesca, grilled squid, and yogurt for dessert. The squid was absolutely wonderful. It was big, too, and white, and I couldn't finish it all. (Many days later we learned that the white squid is actually a different variety of squid, called Pocha I think. It is white because they peel the skin off of it.)
My sweetie had paella, trout with country ham, and crema de arroz. He really loved the rice dessert. It wasn't thick like most rice puddings are.
We were too tired to stroll the city and drink and eat in this place and that place and the other one, so we called it a night.

Shoes!

When we first discovered the pilgrimage to Santiago, we didn’t know very much about it. We did discover very quickly that the walk is very long, and that a pilgrim needs good hiking shoes. So we went to REI and entrusted ourselves to the helpful sales guy. 

We tried on shoes, and more shoes, and then some more shoes. We walked around the store and climbed up and down on the small sloping rock. We thought we had picked out the perfect shoes to hike 450 miles in.

Then we took a few walks—just some 2 mile walks and 3 mile walks. First my sweetie discovered that the shoes he’d picked out were squeezing his toes. So we went back to REI—he wore two pair of socks that day—and bought him new shoes. 

Then we took a 10 mile walk on the Mission Hike and Bike Trail, and my big toe turned purple. This was—well—scary. We took it easy for a few days. 

We tried again a week later, and at the halfway point I took my shoes off and sat down for a few minutes on a bench. We put our shoes back on and headed back toward the car—the second 5 miles of our walk. About a mile later my feet hurt, and they kept up a steady hurt the whole 4 miles back to the car. When I took the shoes off, I discovered that my toe was turning purple again.

Apparently, about mile 6 or 8, my feet jump a size. And, apparently, it is not as easy as I thought to tell if the shoe fits or not. I ordered the next size up online from REI.com and took it somewhat easy until the new ones came.

The new shoe: Merrell half-height ladies, same model as the old one, but the next half size larger.

 The socks in the picture are doubled up. The new shoe is too wide at the heel and has given me a blister—but that’s better than crushing the end of the toes with every step! And I am going to put a heel pad in the shoe to take up some of that empty space the heel is rattling around in.