Walking Day 3:
Zubiri to Pamplona
22 kilometers  31,783 steps

Today was a generally flat day compared to the previous two. But even the guidebook elevation diagram showed undulations, up and down, up and down. The climbs, while not nearly as long as the climbs of the last two days, were at times a bit steep. Much of the walk today was in forest or adjacent to forest by fields. And only some very short stretches were on roads.

I started fairly early at 7:45 AM from Zubiri after a pretty good breakfast. Most of the first two hours I walked by myself through varied terrain.

A good stretch of a few hundred meters went through this tall grass. The picture is looking back, so the pilgrim shown is going the same way as me.

Some fairly lengthy sections of the path today has been improved since last year with these flat stones, avoiding the mud. Last year when I walked this same path, it was lightly raining and some sections were quite muddy. Today rain threatened, but we only got about 20-30 minutes of very light drizzle. Only enough to put on the pack cover and continue. Without the pack cover, the rain finds a way to get into the pack, so it is better safe than sorry. We continued in the forest.

The path looks much the same as in the previous picture, except without the flat stones. The ground is very hard-packed, so there is very little mud in this section.

And sometimes the path escapes the forest and we walk along a field by the forest. For much of the day, we were walking very close to a river, and sometimes the sound of the river broke through the quiet. For most of the day, we were far enough from the highway that traffic noise was infrequent.

An example of a waymarker with the typical Spanish shell graphic. Since I walked this a year and a half ago, the French red and white markers have been added. One fellow pilgrim told me that many French pilgrims start farther north in France then Saint Jean Pied de Port and only walk to Pamplona, so the French-style markers were added into Pamplona. We shall see tomorrow if this is right.

In a little town of Trinidad de Arre, we cross over the Rio Ulzama for about the third time today on this old and rather majestic bridge. Only bout 4.5 kilometers to the old city of Pamplona. And here is a view from the bridge of the river upstream, looking very peaceful.

Finally we come to the outskirts of Pamplona. Here are two examples of the waymarkers on the sidewalk nearing Pamplona:

This is hard to miss. Being so clear and unfaded, I suspect this was recently painted on the sidewalk. As we got into the town of Pamplona itself, these markers appear and continue at about 10 meter intervals all the way through Pamplona:

Hard to miss the path through the city as they get polished by the constant wear and reflect brightly in the sun peaking out between the clouds.

Finally we are at the bridge across the river to the old city of Pamplona.

After crossing the river and walking up the last climb into the old city, we reach the drawbridge. The drawbridge is open; we are allowed to enter the old city (I highly suspect the drawbridge never closes nowadays).

A view of the Cathedral through the narrow crowded streets of the old city. Pamplona has a population of about 200,000. After being in towns like Zubiri at population under 300 and Saint Jean Pied de Port at 1800, Pamplona seems large – there are cars and traffic lights and many people. Along the Camino de Santiago, most of the towns are small farming towns with populations under a few thousand. There are three upcoming cities each with a population of about 200,000 or less: Burgos, Lèon, and Santiago de Compostela. When we arrive at each, it is a bit of a perspective shock being in such a large city. It is all perspective. In our daily life we are in cities of many million population, and 200,000 would seem small; here in northern Spain, these cities seem very large after being away from cities for day after day.

Next: Over Alto de Pardón (The Hill of Forgiveness) and onto Puenta la Reina