One Year Ago: the Long Climb

(from my journal)

Puente La Reina
Easter Thursday / 7pm

Arrived exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally.

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9pm

Showered. Clothes washed. In a bar looking forward to food and wine. I’m utterly wiped out. My feet are numb and my shoulders ache.

This is the day my pilgrimage actually began.

We started the day in magnificent Pamplona. We joined up with a Brit named Charlie. He’s 69 years old, a retired army Colonel, retired businessman, all around great organizer of our motley group.

We started late, as we wished to attend the 9:30am Mass at the cathedral. This proved a good choice.

The interior of the building defies description – I could easily have spent the day there. Photos and postcards might give an idea, but the sheer scale and the profusion of art is designed to overwhelm, and it succeeds better than any place I’ve been outside of Rome.

The Mass was chanted by the canons in Spanish and Latin. Again, I had some difficulty working out when the Mass actually began, since they chanted the proper antiphons with the psalms. I caught up at the Gloria and was able to follow after that.

It was an incredible experience, with the weight of history pressing but brought alive in the moment by the chant. We finally left the cathedral after Mass and some photos at 10:30, putting us about two hours off the pace.

I stopped in a shop to pick up some souvenirs and left walking in the wrong direction. I soon turned myself around, but proceeded in getting lost twice more before I left Pamplona.

The edge of the city is quite something; you’re just walking through a quiet urban neighbourhood, you cross the last street, and suddenly you’re in the Spanish version of Tuscany – all gentle, rolling hills swathed in shades of emerald, with each hill topped by a shining, white-washed hill town, terracotta roofs and an ancient stone church crowning all.

We walked for some time through this sort of countryside, until the long climb began.

The ridge – really a single steep spine cutting through the countryside – is called the Sierra de Erreniega, and it’s crowned by a long line of modern windmills. We began the long ascent, finally reaching the village of Zariquiegui, where we stopped for a much needed refill of our water bottles. And then the great ascent began in earnest. The path was steep, and it consisted of stones the size of a fist, irregularly spaced through a morass of mud.

As we ascended, the road quickly narrowed to a footpath – really a flowing stream of mud and water – no more than a meter wide.

Up and up we climbed, in constant danger of slipping and falling. Parts of the path were entirely wiped out by landslide or subsidence, and still we climbed.

At one point, I lost my balance and caught myself by grabbing hold of some thorny nettles with my free hand.

Although I did not tumble, my hand was covered in bloody pinpricks. They were tiny enough that they sealed in moments.

Finally, we made it to the top of the ridge, an ascent of 280 meters over a distance perhaps 9 km. In addition to the windmills, there is a great series of pilgrim statues – a long line of them, walking a horseback – realized in flat steel. As we posed for our obligatory photos, a cold rain began to fall. Ponchos out!

We then began the descent into the valley beyond, some 260 meters down to the town of Uterga, where we stopped for a very late lunch at about 4pm. We met up with Kristof there, but he pressed on ahead of us as we ate.

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10:30

The climb of the Sierra de Erreniega was probably the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done.

But the day was not over! Some 2 km past Uterga, at the millage of Muruzábal, we look a little 5 km detour to visit the old Templar church of Our Lady of Eunate. A greater contrast with the cathedral could not be imagined. Where the Pamplona cathedral was enormous and ornate, the little octagonal church of Eunate, with its surrounding cloister, was the very model of Romanesque simplicity.

The tall, narrow windows were not stained glass, but appeared to be a milky-white mica. The rough pews faced a plain stone altar and a charmingly primitive carving of Our Lady, enthroned as a queen, with the infant Jesus on her lap. Both wore crowns. Mary’s head was much too large for her body.

As we prayed there, I wept. This was a holy place. None of our party were unmoved, even the non-Catholics among us.

I remarked a little later that “this had been worth the entire trip to Spain”.

When we left Eunate at about 6pm, I was just shattered. I had a profound experience there, and at the time time my body was giving out. My feet had gone numb, and I staggered a little as I walked. By the time we got to Obanos, I was working on autopilot.

Ali, meanwhile, was having a bad allergic reaction to her nylon sock lining, and Cliff’s blisters were starting to get the better of him. Charlie was using one of Petra’s hiking poles.

We were quite the ragged band as we staggered into Puente La Reina. We took the second albergue we found, and we all sort of collapsed after our 26 km day.

Once we finally tucked into our pilgrim’s dinner at 9pm, however, we revived: mussels in a spicy tomato sauce, followed by a lamb shank, followed by pears poached in port. After this and half a bottle of vino tinto, I finally feel like I can collapse into sleep.

Good night!

All the photos: Day 3.