El Camino Day 8: Los Arcos to Logrono

/ calleoscope
El Camino: Scenic Photos
El Camino: Wildlife and Domesticated Animals
El Camino: Maps and Distances Hiked

Once again, I will lay out the plan for today’s hike! We have a 17.0 mile hike from Los Arcos to Logrono relatively flat so not too strenuous. Our path today takes us out of the “Navarre” region of Spain and into the “La Rioja” region of Spain . . . wine country!

Today’s map . . . Taken from “Village to Village Guide, Camino de Santiago, Camino Frances: St. Jean – Santiago – Finisterre” https://www.caminoguidebook.com/about. An excellent guidebook we highly recommend !

Today’s hike is a bit flat and mundane so I will just post some pictures of interesting objects and things that I see along the way. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Just a beautiful wildflower against the backdrop of wheat!

Bales of hay!

The earth is baked and cracked in some places, but then moistened by rain.

A beetle!

Luckily, I don’t have to try and summarize the history of the areas I’m going through, you can just read it off the signs!

El Camino is properly called “The Way of St. James.” El Camino is the short version meaning “The Way.”

This historical chart with pictures shows the “La Rioja” region of Spain.

I’d be lying if I said the journey that we are on is easy. Considering that we live in modern times; it must of been so much more dangerous for medieval pilgrims who made this journey. In fact, the history of this route mentions not only weather exposure as a danger, but also bandits, robbers, war, famine, disease, and many more trials. Pilgrims traveled with coins sewn into their cloaks so that robbers could not find them. It’s pretty humbling to think of what El Camino used to be and what it has become.

The bottom part reads, “Bless the people of Bargata, protect the pilgrims!” Yes, we will take the protection!

Nice mural of a city we went through called Viana.

So tempting to stop and take in the view and drink some wine, but it was hot! We walked on . . .

Some fun wall art that we came across. Of course, I had to take a picture of the cat!

Hope you enjoyed some of the curious things we saw today. We’ll have a nice rest in Logrono and get recharged for tomorrow’s portion of El Camino!

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