Navarre to La Rioja

The beginning of October saw us walk into a new province in Spain, La Rioja: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rioja_(Spain)

If you ask a random Spaniard where the the best wine comes from, they will typically say “La Rioja”, and we’ve seen some of the grape fields along the way.

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Lucky and Milky with Tio Pepe bull in background

As planned, Oct 1st was an easy day, about 11 km (6+ miles) to the provincial capital of Logrono. Milky met his friend from home, and after a coffee together with her we split up, Lucky and I seeing a bit of the town and just taking it easy.

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It was fun getting to know Rosie (Milky’s friend) a bit, and then she had a train to catch to start her biking adventure.

Our excellent hostel turned out to have a major drawback: Thursday through Saturday nights there are a lot of boisterous people that hang out at bars and such just outside our balcony, and they talk and holler and chant and generally make a great deal of noise until around 4 am. So Milky and I didn’t get much sleep. Lucky, who we currently hate, apparently slept like a baby.

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Some spectacular sky effects Oct 2nd

For Friday (Oct 2nd) the weather was cool to cold in the morning, but we managed to crank out our 29 km (about 18 miles) to the town of Najera in good time.

It was easy to remember that we were walking through a famous wine growing region, as there were grapes everywhere. We each picked a couple along the way to try out, and these seeded purple grapes were ripe and sweet.   Lovely.

We’re in a very nice Albergue tonight, and I have high hopes of catching up on my sleep. We’re 8 to a room, and I even got a bottom bunk this time. Apart from ourselves we have a friendly Spaniard from Bilbao, an American woman, an Australian who grew up in South Africa, and an Irish woman, plus one we haven’t met yet.

Life on this trail continues to be good, and we’re all very happy to be here

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