28.9 km – 18 miles

6:00am to 1:00pm walking time

300 meters – 984 feet elevation gain

I started earlier than normal again today since today’s distance was going to be even longer than yesterday and the weather looked like it would be hot and sunny. Quickly after leaving the old town part of Logroño I met a couple from the US walking and we chatted until the sun started to rise. The cloud cover and wind kept things really cool – even cold if you stopped. So that was a welcome surprise.

Shortly after leaving town we followed a nice path leading up to a reservoir. You can tell this is where plenty of locals hang out for picnics and other things. after that it was vineyard after vineyard until reaching Nàjera. It’s beautiful, but you can only take so many pictures of vineyards, so I don’t have a ton or pictures today.

There was only one place to stop all day since I didn’t take the optional longer route through another town. Knowing that, I grabbed food and an Aquarius for the road. My Canadian friend Ian joined me as I left town and we had some good conversation through wine country.

What you can’t see well in my images is the beautiful mountains off in the distance. Didn’t seem to matter what direction you looked, there were beautiful rocky mountains.

There was a bit of kitten saga today on the Camino. There was a mama cat and two kittens – though the little black one pictured above didn’t seem like it belonged to the rest of the family and it very much wanted to go with the humans walking by. It didn’t seem fully unhealthy but it seemed like it needed help the way it kept following and meowing at every person. I later saw it ended up following some people and that another gal picked it up. I’ve now overheard in my albergue that she got it to a vet. There are lots of stray cats and it’s probably best to leave them alone, but this little one was persistent and hopefully the vet will be able to find it a home.

I’m in a nice albergue tonight with only 3 others in my room. Hopefully it’s not as hot as the albergue from two nights ago.

Now to go wander around the town and scout out what I’ll be having for dinner.

Update: adding some pics from wandering around Nàjera…