Today has been a classic Camino day; no spectacular heights to scale, a lot of walking on paths (always better than being where cars are), but many small surprises and delights, and practical challenges as well.

These mid-September days are very hot in Spain, every afternoon ending comfortably above 30° – far too hot for walking safely. So, if you want to make normal progress, it obliges you to make an early start. I was away by 7am today. The temperature was 15°, which is perfectly comfortable.

The first past of the walk was very flat and easy, always reassuring when you really can’t see very clearly what’s in front of you! After a few kilometres the path disappeared into pine forest, and then started to rise. This went on for a while, and the gradient got fiercer and fiercer – I was puffing and wheezing at the top.

We came out on an upland path, rounded a corner and saw this.

A perfect small hilltop town, lit by the morning sun. The landscape is also very striking for someone used to deciduous trees.

It reminds me a bit of landscapes in ‘Gladiator’. Very beautiful, but very different from anything I have walked in heretofore.

Cirauqui had a man running a thriving ‘breakfast for pilgrims’. I am always so grateful for people who open these businesses on the route. Sometimes you see signs telling you there is a cafe, a shop, or a bar at some hundreds of metres off the route. They might as well be on the moon as far as weary and footsore walkers are concerned.

I had a good breakfast break, and then got going heading for Lorca. The next of today’s surprises came as we left the village. The path under our feet peeled back and we were walking on Roman road.

It was astonishing. Visions of legioneers, and business people, farmers and families in tunics and togas rose before me. I wondered what a heritage consultant would make of this road now being worn away by an explosion of use created by late-modern people looking for meaning.

The worst was that after a kilometre or two we topped a little rise and the Roman road disappeared under the tarmac of a busy modern road. And all the shades went with it. I hope, but I’m not confident, that it is still there, ready to be walked on again some day.

The road to Lorca intertwined itself with a motorway, but this was a beautiful tunnel designed expressly for the Camino.

So many churches hereabouts are Romanesque and sturdy. Look at the solid apsidal east end of Lorca church (sadly shut). We walked on out into the rolling country again.

The route was by now getting very hot, it being 11:30am. I stopped at every village that could give me a cold drink, about every five kms or so. This was strikingly lively church with excellent volunteers greeting without pushing. On the last leg to Estella we passed this abandoned hermitage, originating in the 10th century.

It was roasting by now. This stationary wind vane symbolised the unrelenting character of the weather.

The entry to Estella was dominated by a very smelly winery and came through a scruffy back road. I was not expecting it to be town of architectural marvels!

Sadly it wasn’t open – I would have loved to have seen what the brilliant stonemasons had done to the interior of the XII C church. The old town was charming, but the square at the end contained these wonders:

I still had an hour before I could get access to my digs for tonight, so I had an excellent ‘Pilgrim’s Menu’ lunch in a small restaurant – three courses for 16€. After 14:00 I could get in, so I had a shower and a siesta.

The practical challenge presented in these very hot days is dealing with clothing that is drenched with sweat at the end of the walking day. Lots of hostels may offer washing facilities, either for hand-washing or machines, but getting it dried can be tricky. One of the features of travelling light is keeping up with your washing: which is why I am writing this in a rather glamorous launderette.

On the way to find it, I stopped at San Pedro. My room is the top left one in the building next to the church. Here is a detail of the door, and the interior.

It is a very old church, and the restrained interior was rather moving. And, one very rarely comes across matching twin pulpits.

With everything clean, I have come into the town’s central square for some food and drink, before an early night. After many nights of hostel accommodation in rooms of ten, twelve or more, I am treating myself to a room of my own, and, what is more, a Room with a View!