Randy’s Camino Frances 2026

 No up & out the door time today. I was able to sleep in until 6:30ish. Got on my phone, made a couple of  reservations @ Albergues for May1&2. Burgos was my last town that I had per-booked my Camino accommodations, so now I am doing just 1-2 days ahead. Today’s weather shows clouds w/ sun but no rain. Well we all known how that has been working out. It looks to stay in the upper 50’s to upper 60’s today. I’ll take my rain jacket just in case though. My first order of business was to go and get some breakfast. I chose to stay and eat at the hotel. They had a pretty decent selection of food, and most important cafe con Leche. Some of you may be wondering what exactly is a Café con Leche. It is basically a cappuccino without all the foam. I would describe it as more of between a latte and a cappuccino. So the next time you are in a Starbucks, ask your barista to make you a café con Leche, and see if they know what it is. The next thing on my agenda was to gather all my d...

 Day 12 on my Camino, it’s hard to believe. It’s 6:58am, and it’s 51° with a light rain falling, I put on my rain pack & rain jacket before I left Hotel Papasol.  I stopped shortly after that to put on my poncho, better be safe than sorry. I looked at the weather report, last night, no mention of rain until later in the day. Once  again, boy were they wrong!!!!. I  just hope the trail wont be too muddy. We will see if these new ultra Gore-Tex shoes will help keep my feet dry.🤞🏻 Hotel Papasol has a nice rustic vibe. All the wood floors creek. Old wood beams support the ceilings. None of the room doors fit correct, you can see cracks of light coming through the door jams. The rooms are small & the bathroom even smaller. They did offer an individual pilgrim style meal. 1st choice Soup or salad, I picked salad. 2nd, main course, I went with ham croquettes. 3d course, desert, I went with custard pudding. The hotel sits right below the village church. I think thi...

 6:12am, & I’m out the door, and away I go. It’s 50° foggy & a bit humid due to all the rain we had last night. I am leaving in the dark today. First time I get to use my head lamp. You are probably wondering, why is he leaving in the dark? The short story, that’s when my roommates started getting up, so I just decided to get up to. I was surprised when I exited my room & see half of the second floor pilgrims loading up their pack. I can see leaving early when it’s hot but now the weather is cool, why leave so early? So I did what everybody else was doing and loaded my pack. Before we go any further, I’ll go over last nights events. I had my first real piligrim dinner. About 15-20 pilgrims all gathered around the big table to have dinner together. Started w/ the traditional Spanish salad, bread, red wine, from local winery, & the main dish Arroz con pollo. Basically, the dish was rice, some small vegetables and chicken. Then the desert, wait for it, wait for it… van...

 It’s Monday, April 27. I am up bright and early this morning around 5:30am. I actually wanted to get up nice and early to give myself time to get packed and eat a little breakfast. Casa Raul is a very nice place. Definitely would stay here again if and when I come back. The place wasn’t even close to being full. I think only 8-10 people that I counted. It was sure nice to have all my close washed and cleaned for the next few days. I was planning to do all my laundry in Burgos on my rest day. I gathered all my gear & headed downstairs. The owners had set up a very basic breakfast. Drip coffee, fruit, breakfast cookies, & toast w/ jam. I took a banana & an orange w/ me for the road. I looked at my guide booklet, while eating. I had more towns I would be going through than I have had in the last few days. My estimated mileage would be 15-16 miles according to the book. It is 6:53am.  It’s a chilly 49°. I actually had to put on my fleece jacket this morning. It’s curr...

 Out the door at 7:19 on a cool morning. My watch says 49° , not sure if I really believe it.  A little update on last night. Had a nice quiet night in my hostel, single room w/ private bath. After I showered & washed a couple things I was off to try and get something to eat. I had a short walk into town and when I arrived I was shocked to see what looked like hundred of people partying. It was like one big town party or some type of celebration. People were everywhere, drinking, laughing, kids were running around in every direction. I headed over to where all the restaurants were, it was even worse there. Everything was packed and only alcohol was being served. I asked a couple of restaurant employees at two different places about trying to get some food and they said no food until 8 PM. I finally did find a pizza place that was going to start serving food again at 7 PM and it was 5 PM at this point in time. So I just went back to my room. I had a couple of small snacks. ...

 Out the door at 7:18 AM. MA little bit later start than normal. I took full advantage of staying at the hotel. I was even able to take a nice shower this morning before heading out. last night was a nice quiet evening just stayed in my hotel room, and getting caught up on what’s been going on in the world. Kind of disconnected from world events. Today’s route takes me from Logrono to Najera, about the same distance as yesterday 17-18 miles. Looking at the topography it looks to be not as much elevation change today, just a lot of up and down over small hills, more or less walking through the wine vineyards.  I walked out of my hotel and everything was wet so at some point time it had rained in the night, but the skies were clearing. It was 53° & partly cloudy. The hotel offered a breakfast, but I decided to forgo that and I would just wait until I came across something in one of the little villages ahead of me. Heading out of the city I hooked up with a guy from Chicago w...

 Out the door at 6:51am. Before we start on today’s adventure, I want to talk a little about last night‘s pilgrim dinner. I signed up for the 7pm pilgrim dinner the Albergue was providing for a fee of course. Now not every Albergue’s provide pilgrim dinners. Sometimes the pilgrims themselves who are staying at these Albergue’s will have what’s known as a communal dinner where they will go out and buy food to make a dinner and then each person is assigned a duty like to preparing the food, cooking the food and clean up the mess afterwards.  I was a little disappointed only 5 people, including me signed up, because I know there were many more people staying here than that. The dinner quest were two woman from Korea. I thought they were either family or friends, but it turns out they were neither, they just meet on the Camino recently. The man sitting next to me, Arnold, was from Australia. He is walking the Camino alone, like me, because he couldn’t get any of his family or frie...

 6:51am, temp 56 degrees w/ cloudy sky’s. Out the door nice and early this morning. I was surprised by the cloudy conditions, because weather forecast yesterday was for sun and temps in the upper 70’s -80’s. Oops somebody got it wrong. I also decided to dump the long pants and from now, walking in shorts.  I was in a 5 bed dorm. I had a lady from Wales, married American couple, from Virginia, and an Asian Canadian girl, that was so scatter brained or she was just amp’d up on caffeine, I couldn’t tell. She was literally bouncing all over the room. She came back to the room around 10pm, let me just say in a polite way she was not very quiet, more like a bull in a china shop!! Camino Life!!!! Okay back to today’s walk. Out the door @ 6:50am. Miles today around 14, about the same as yesterday. Not so much elevation climbing today. I was really surprised by the cloudy conditions, but I’ll take it any day over the blazing sun. I didn’t par take in the Albergue breakfast this morning...

 Out the door at 7:20, I was a slacker this morning. Had a decent nights sleep. I had 3 roommate's. two woman & 1 man. One woman was from Portugal and the other woman from I don’t know because she came in late and proceeded to make enough noise to wake up the entire building😡. The man was from Italy, but I didn’t catch his name. He was in bed asleep by 8pm. Albergue Estrella, a very nice place, I will definitely give them a nice review. They had this Chinese Buddha atmosphere going on, with the big Buddha statue, incense radiating throughout the bottom floor & chanting type of music. No pilgrim dinner, but they did have a pilgrim breakfast for eight euros and I went with that. I was awoke by the clapping of thunder & lightning in the middle of the night followed by a brief rain shower. So the one night I don’t have any snoring to deal with I got thunder🤣🤣, oh well at least it was brief. Okay, 7:20 am out the door, April 22nd, outside temp about 62. I ate about 1/2 my...

 Out the door at 6:50am. Look at me getting out earlier everyday. Had my first great, undisturbed, night of sleep in 5 nights, and I needed it. Woke up at 5:45, slept straight through the night. Got everything packed, went down to the gathering area. Had my two cups of coffee con leche, a bowl of cereal, toast, & OJ. I just want to give a shout out to the Aloha Hostel for being so nice and helpful with any questions or concerns I may have had. If and when I come back to Pamplona, they will be my first choice for room accommodations. I forgot to mention a couple things I did yesterday. I followed the route of the famous Running of the Bulls. Starting at the bull pen, making my way up through the small winding cobble stone streets, finally reaching the Bull Ring. Now I can say, I have walked the route of the running bulls. 2nd thing I didn’t mention, there was a film crew at the Pamplona Cathedral, filming, what I assumed was a movie. They had props set up and actors milling arou...

 Up and out the door at 7 AM. But before we get into day three, Let’s talk about yesterday evening and last night. We had a wonderful pilgrim dinner with all the pilgrims that were staying in the Albergue. We started off with the appetizer, a sausage link with a piece of bread. The hostess also bought out a large pitcher of red wine. The first item menu was mixed vegetable soup, and the main course item, large piece of chicken, that the meat just fell off the bone, with scallop potatoes. The dessert was a chocolate gelato, tiramisu piece of cake, But it was dang good. I was stuffed from dinner, I decided to go take a walk through the little town or village just to see what it was about. The hotspot in town was the little ice cream truck that was pulled into like a park. I bet half the town was there getting ice cream. I was staying in a four bedroom dorm room, my roommates were two men from Italy, Aldo and Alfonso, and a guy from Germany whose name I could not understand. That was ...

 Day 2 started @6am with piped in music, the singing Monks🤣. I guess since I was staying at a monastery, then the singing Monks it is, or they just wanted everybody to getup the heck out.  This was the first time I have ever slept in a monastery. Let me tell you these people run a tight ship. If you don’t have your registration verification and your pilgrim QR code, you are not getting in. They have an out building for people who don’t have the right credentials. Luckily I had all my ducks in a row. They have three floors with what I would say 50 plus beds. The beds are in cubicles, two beds per cubicle. I had Ricardo from Italy, Roll that R when you say his name, as my bunk mate.  After I did my daily chores, shower, got my bed all together and my cloths laid out for tomorrow I headed straight for the Cafe/Bar. Had a wonderful 12 inch ham & cheese sandwich with two of my favorite cold beverages. Then back to the monastery to wait for our evening pilgrim dinner. Dinn...

 My Camino Frances has begun. It’s been a long journey to get here. Wanting to do this back as far as 2021, but that thing called Covid intervened. Even though me & Maryann were fortune enough to do the Camino Portuguese last yr. The Camino Frances was my dream and today that dream began. I didn’t sleep well last night due to my roommate was snoring like a bear in hibernation. Now I understand why we slept in hotels on our Camino last yr!! But I wanted to experience to true Camino experience.  I got up around 6:15, took all my gear into the bathroom, as not to wake my Smokey the Bear, to pack, get dressed in the light. I headed down to the lobby to grab a quick bite to eat before I headed out. Gulped down a chocolate croissant and a quick cup of coffee, then headed out to begin my epic journey. 7am, I was not out side 30 secs when this guy comes up behind me and says are you leaving now. I turn to him and said yes, boy was that a mistake. He said I’ll join you… ahhhh okay....