Leg 8 – Navarette to Najera

Knowing that we’d only need to walk roughly 11 miles today, we had a more leisurely start than normal.

After clearing the outskirts of Navarette we had about 3 miles of tedious walking on a track that ran directly next to the Logrono to Burgos motorway. Boring!!



A Spanish motorway today

We chose to make a slight detour away from the more direct Camino across to a village called Ventosa to have breakfast. This was our first time walking through the vineyards of La Rioja. No doubt the first of many to come.


Rioja Vineyards today


Ventosa today

On a day of very little in the way of climbs, we soon made it up and across the ridge behind Ventosa. From there we got a great view of the still snow-covered peaks of the Sierra de la Demanda and in particular Pico de San Lorenzo.


Pico de San Lorenzo today



Najera today


A big bird nesting next to a church tower in Najera today

There was a clear difference in the countryside – much less in the way of greenery and wild flowers. Dare I say it, boring field upon field of vines. Still never mind, at least the end product helps to cheer us all!

It really didn’t take that long to reach our destination Najera. Apparently it was the capital of the Kingdom of Navara in the 11th and 12th centuries – given its current appearance I can see why the Royalty went elsewhere. For the first time I felt like we were in the backwaters of Spain – the areas so badly impacted by the economic downturn caused by the crash. Yes it had an impressive big old church and monastery, but that was probably it. Just really down at heel with scruffy looking, and over-weight people. What a strange world we live in now – where often it’s the poor who are so obese!

That’s all for today.


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