Tiebas to Puenta la Reina

Breakfast at the same bar as yesterday with the same local people who greeted me enthusiastically. Elena collected me and corroborated my evidence based (scat) opinion that there is a healthy population of pine marten in this part of Navarre. Not her favourite animal on account of their predilection for birds’ eggs.

Tiebas looked as grey and cold this morning as it had yesterday. Elena drove off with my bag to Puenta la Reina, I donned my rain jacket and started the slog on a gravel pathway alongside the National highway. After a few kilometres, the route being very clearly way marked, I went under the road and emerged at Muruarte de Reta, a former railway town.

The rain held off and by the time I’d reached Enériz it was warm and sunny. I stopped for an excellent café con leche (one euro) in the main square and watched folk coming and going from the bakery.

My next planned stop was the extraordinary church of Santa María de Eunate with its roofless cloister of 33 arches, allegedly modelled on the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, extra.

Only another couple of kilometres to Obanos where the popular Camino Francés meets the Camino Aragonés. Pilgrims and walkers appeared everywhere and more “buen Caminos” were exchanged in the hour to Puente la Reina than in the last two and half weeks.

Puente la Reina is the official end of the Camino Aragonés and it’s where I’m finishing today. I had wondered if I would feel like continuing, I don’t. I completed the Camino Francés in 2022 and thoroughly enjoyed it. This Camino though has been very different. Contemplative, sometimes challenging and unpredictable, wild and rugged. A perfect combination of landscapes, remote communities and Camino numinosity, for want of a better word.