Estella to Sansol

We had a great night 's sleep and started  out early. The weather has turned ,  but only for one day, and the dreaded ponchos had to come out of the packs.  Watching me try to put on the @): poncho could be material for a comedy act until Paul get's me straightened out. It rained rather heavily for about three hours then stopped for the rest of the day. It's hard to stay dry.

The prior year on this part if the camino we suffered through intense heat and traded it in for rain and mud today.  There were two bycyclists who had to use sticks to scrape the mid/clay off the wheels, gears , etc to keep going

Our first stop was the open spigot winery.  The wine is free from a fountain beside the Camino, but we got there in the early morning so we limited our intake except for the bottle we took with us.

There are regular reminders along the trail about boots that did work as indicated below.

The feet are a major concern and we take breaks to let them cool down.

Paul and Kate above. They put the plastic tarp on sloped area first and. they both sat down at the same time and slid down the hill. Flat was better.

Today was a day to experience the Basque Country clay. After the morning rain the trails were at times muddy.

Lunch break.

We found a wonderful place to stay.  It is operated by a family in the old family residence.  The hospitality was outstanding and the house was filled with nick knacks.  We paid to stay there and have dinner.  We were also promised an after dinner special drink.

Part of our room

When we got there we ask about wine (to buy) they brought it to our room for free.

We then moved to the garden and continued the mid Afternoon gathering but ran out of wine.  We asked about more wine and the father of the operator   ( she had gone to pick up her child) brought us a very nice drink, but not wine.

We then had dinner I had the opportunity to sit with a Spanish lady and a French couple.  I asked about why the French do not talk in English and confirmed that they learned English in school but were not comfortable speaking it.  We then went on to have a conversation in french, English and Spanish  - quite challenging .

We were done eating when the operator came in and asked  "who asked for more wine earlier ?"  It turned out that the father was generous and we drank the after dinner special drink before dinner.  Oops.  We blamed it on language and the other diners did not come after us.

A great night a great experience

Guy