We left our lovely Alburgue this morning a bit late and walked through the pretty town of Estella over the pointy bridge and on towards the wine fountain - free red wine!

Laura isn’t walking today as she’s not feeling great and her knee is hurting. Mary has blisters and in a lot of discomfort so only walking to L’os Arcos. The rest of us are soldiering on!

There’s a small forge just before the fountain, where Camino shells and other ironworks are made, some of them extremely intricate and beautiful. It’s been a family concern for years, but I couldn’t understand the Spanish to get the full story. The wine fountain is a must stopping point and we have to try the wine and have a pic taken!

The walk today is undulating, but the hills seem very steep to my tired legs and seemed to take longer than usual to reach our first coffee stop! The coffee looked really strong and so I asked for some hot water and got really told off by the proprietor as it would ruin his good coffee, however he did give me some water with much head shaking and hand waving! He was right though, the coffee was great, smooth and tasty, one of the best cups of the whole week!

We wandered onwards through beautiful undulating countryside with the hills in the distance to L’os Arcos., a lovely, typical basque town, as ever up a steep hill! We had lunch here and then walked my favourite bit of the day, through beautiful rolling countryside, lots of wild flowers, grass swaying in the breeze, so fascinating to watch. There was sometimes a very cool breeze and other times the sun came out and it got quite warm.

We heard through the pilgrim grapevine that The Napoleon way that we’d walked at the beginning of the week in temperatures of 22 degrees was closed yesterday due to bad weather!

The road wound it’s way around the hill onward towards Sansol, our stop for the night. Our Alburgue tonight looks very majestic and has great views from the pilgrims lounge. It’s another squeaky clean and tidy hostel, albeit a problem with the hot water, so no hot shower today. Plenty of rose wine shared in the lounge area made up for it and chatting with fellow traveler’s is always good!

Weird pilgrim meal tonight, but lots of wine and shared with other pilgrims.

Bit upset tonight after hearing Bills report on Freddie’s agressive behaviour again. At least he now knows why I was so upset last time it happened.

Really tired today, so early night and ready to enjoy our last walking day tomorrow.