Day Thirty Six: Cirauqui to Torres del Rio: Bait and Switch?

May 2, 2017

Breakfast time did not bring quite the same feeling of comraderie among the albergue clients as there had been the night before. Some had risen really early and left and others were not yet quite awake. So people just grabbed a table and basically ate on their own from the self serve offering. The offering was limited to some dry bread, dry cookies, orange juice, coffee, butter and jam. The cost of that was 3.50 euros, so not exactly a bargain.

We made our way down through the town, looking for the highway. The streets were so twisty that there was no way to actually navigate, but so long as stairs were avoided, down was the way to go. The highway for us was N1110, and this rather comfortingly was the only one we needed to follow all day. Because of the nearby autoroute, our road was mostly abandoned, making for comfortable riding.

The church directly in front of our albergue

Looking back up to where our albergue was, by the church

Because of some hills, which caused some bike pushing, our speed was about the same as the walkers in the early going. Generally, though, we are figuring on 40 or more km per day, which means we eventually double the walkers' speed. Though going much faster than walkers we are of course going much slower than our level ground - river or canal speed.

We stuck to the road this time, but got to watch the walkers on the trail, whichh normally paralleled the road. In fact we ran in to some of our friends from last night when the walking trail crossed the road.

The German twins - 7 km down the track from the albergue

The fields and vines here are perfectly tended, but this is the only person we have seen actually working on them

We found someone on the trail that we can outrun!

What our road looked like for the morning

We assume this graffitti has to do with Basque independence?

One of our guidebooks (the one from Cicerone) spent a lot of time running down the hill towns we were passing, the farms, and the landscape, and we found this totally unfair and inaccurate. In fact we would frequently pause and exclaim "Isn't this gorgeous!".

The only slightly larger town on our route was Estella. This provided one of our so far rare opportunities to see and go in to some kind of store. The first was a bakery cafe, which we identified at first by spotting the "ants", people in the street carrying bread. As seems to be the custom in Spain, the bakery did not feature a big display window or large sliding door as in France and Germany. Rather it had a normal door and small window. Inside the display seemed quite reasonable, with a selection of danish pastries, breads, and tarts. We put together a selection of stuff, including some German style seeded bread. This turned out to be good. But the danish was not sweet enough and had used that form of cheap shortening that coats your mouth and lasts forever. Ok, well, the research goes on.

The same little corner that had the bakery also had two fruit and vegetable stores. The model was the same - no fancy display, and not exactly an overwhhelming stock or quality. We bought a tomato and two carrots. No analysis available yet.

The Cicerone guide claimed for Estella a large main square, busy market, and 12th century palace of the Kings of Navarre. However, though we found the Tourist Information, we never did seems to find these stellar features. Across the street from the TI was the church of San Pedro de la Rua. It was up some steep steps, but the TI had pointed out that there was a lift down the street. We found that, but in a very French way, it was not working. so, we just carried on. We soon found ourselves on a busy street, thinking maybe all the great stuff was back along it and higher up. But we had kind of lost patience and just made for the exits.

The busy street did have one possible advantage - a Decathlon, and even a LIDL groceery store. Dodie's Ortlieb map case had long since lost transparency due to sun degradation, and now it was leaking. So maybe a replacement would be here. Nope, they had never head of Ortlieb. That cemented Estella's status as sort of a write off - except for that seeded bread!

Other stores in Estella. We did find a LIDL and a Simply on the way out of town

Leaking map case ruined one guidebook. we are trying to glue plastic bags onto it.

The non working lift. It turns out we actually were at all the wonderful square and palace and stuff, but it was so subtle we did not know it

Busy road encouraged us to make tracks out of estella

The only real bicycle direction sign we have seen in three days in Spain

Much more fun was Irache, just outside of Estella. This is home to a 12th century Benedictine monastery (closed!) with a major winery. The big claim to fame here is the self serve all you can drink wine fountain, featuring the local red. We had understood the rule to be all you can drink on the spot, but no take outs. This did not seem to stop a pile of people from off a tour bus from filling pop bottles. Charlatans!

Though wine is not our thing, we of course had to try, so we split an ounce. I don't know if it was good or bad, but it seemed to have quite a kick.

On the way to the wine fountain, there was a blacksmith doing iron Camino themed stuff

Charlatan bus tourists leaving the wine fountain

A feature of the open, rolling, hilly landscape here is that you can dramatically see villages/churches coming up. You can also use a map to see where the walkers ought to be at any time, and exclaim that they are pretty high up now, and so forth. We did a lot of this as we entered the vicinity of Villamayor de Monjardin. We began by looking at a ruin high above the town, and trying to figure out what it is. No idea. But Villamayor also has a winery estate and attractive church. It was great looking at all this as we passed by, and also spying walkers on the slopes.

The ruin on the hill - see epilog to today's story for the lowdown on what it is

We saw a couple of these stuck on posts, but do not know the background

Telephoto look at that ruin above Monjardin

We proceeded, past quaint towns like Urbiola, appreciating all the countryside. But we also encountered large vinyards where all the vines were dead, or at least wiped out for this year by frost. Distressing.

Next, in Arcos, we looked at their (closed!) Iglesia Parroquial (16th century). There were lots of albergues around, and also lots of walkers, having already quit for the day, sitting at ourdoor restaurant tables eating salad. Or at least it was salad that caught my eye. On the road, salad is a big thing (because you can't carry it with you easily).

At the end of the church courtyard was a gate that according to a guidebook was where early pilgrims changed money from that of one region to another. Not only do we of course no only have euros, but we are weak on former regions. The book mentioned conversion from Navarrese money to Castille money, but as far as we know, we are still in Navarre. Anyway, it's a gate!

Pilgrims taking it easy in the churchyard

Beyond the gate we stopped at an albergue, just to get a miscellaneous stamp. So many walkers were already lounging about, washing their shorts, and so on. It was a bit disconcerting, but we pressed on. We had reserved a double room in Torres del Rio, so we felt we could cycle on (had to cycle on) and would be ok arriving a little late -though walkers would have ben piling in for some time.

Back on the road, we again remarked on how nice the route is. I took a shot of the road, with Torres (actually nearby Sansol) in the distance. In Sansol we ran in to two walkers that we had noticed up on the ridge. "Hey, the walkers" we exclaimed. We were glad to have arrived at the same time as them. Meanwhile, they had noticed us, and were glad to have kept up with the cyclists.

Our reservation in Torres was at the Albergue Casa Mariela. We had counted it as a bit of a triumph, because Dodie had called yesterday and, we thought, nailed it down in part Spanish - a double room for 30 euros, and we would take the pilgrim supper and breakfast, 62 euros total. When we arrived, they said great, and your room is just down the lane on the right. Down the lane on the right was the (somehow affiliated) Hostal Rural San Andres. This thing had a pool and an elevator, and handed us a bill for 91 euros. Dodie said no way, and wtf! The best explanation they could give us in this bait and switch scheme was that what they had meant on the phone was 30 per person, in the double room. Yeah, sure. Dodie got them down to 49 for the room, and we told them to keep the supper. Instead we boiled up noodles on our gas stove in their fancy hotel room. So there.

Our road to Torres del Rio - looks inviting.

The octagonal church in Torres - is supposed to be great, but it's locked

Sign in front of albergue increases the confusion, because the pool mentioned is at the other one.

The pool at "our" albergue, which is a hotel?

Epilog, for what it's worth department:

That ruin atop the hill at Villamayor de Monjardin was named San Esteban de Deyo. It was part of a muslim network of castles. It got conquered by Sancho Garces, the first king of Pamplona. He really liked it, and was buried there.

Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,580 km (981 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0