Strong at the Broken Places: Part 1. Los Arcos to Viana

In 2016 I walked part of the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain from St Jean Pied de Port in France to Logrono in Rioja province, Spain.

During my second and final week I arrived to the village of Los Arcos in Navarre province. For such a small, simple village it proved to be a delightful surprise and turned out to be one of the best places I had stayed in so far. As I began walking into the village after my musings by the barn on the outskirts that marked the final step of the first half of my trip, I immediately came upon an albergue on the corner of a street. It looked homely and earthy with lots of plants and a pleasant balcony.  Austrians ran it and it seemed very eco-friendly. I was struck by the air of warmth and friendliness as I entered the porch. The main living room was large and comfy with various nooks if you wanted to separate from the milling crowd so to speak. Although simple as is the way with the albergues, everything worked effectively – for example the water was piping hot and plentiful, the showers structured where you could hang everything without it becoming wet and the rooms not too crammed. 

Although small and very rural, Los Arcos had signs that it was more than met the eye. One of these was the huge cathedral in the square. It was the equivalent of having   Westminster cathedral in one of Ireland’s villages such as Dromahair, near where I live. The churches along the camino were  amazing and it was great to multi task by sitting in a service, getting a feel of local religious customs and culture (there was always some sort of ritual around a devotion to a particular local saint) and looking around at the jaw dropping architecture and décor. It seemed that the nearer you got to Santiago de Compostela, where it was thought the saint St James was buried, the bigger the churches.  Los Arcos had been settled since Roman times and was strategically located on a raised part of a flood plain of the River Odron. It was fought over by the kings of Navarre, Aragon and Castile throughout most of the Middle Ages. The land about it was very fertile due to the flood plains and produced a lot of grain, grapes and vegetables. The square was very evocative in a Mediterranean holiday sort of way with a cluster of bars and cafes. After attending a service at the cathedral I enjoyed sitting in the square eating calamari (squid) and potato bravado. I fell to talking to a group of American pilgrims under a moon two thirds full overhead, lighting the vast expanse of the square with swifts swooping and darting like boomerangs high above us.  

Viana was the next rather larger town on the way where I planned to stop, the last before Logrono my final stop. The trip was becoming autumnal in my mind  in that though the end or winter was still  not upon me, there was an air of finality creeping in – a smidgeon of  melancholy interrupting the remaining excitement of seeing  new places , landscape and people still awaiting to be discovered. The walking was quite flat that day and I could see Viana away in the distance looking disturbingly smoggy and industrialised. This seemed to increase as I drew closer and I was not looking forward to searching around for lodgings in a large busy town. I had got used to the tranquil, soft landscape with the green/ grey hues of vine and olive trees interspersed with the breath-taking reds of poppies through the fields and along waysides and hedgerows.

Poppies,poppies,poppies!

And so I entered Viana with trepidation. It looked very dingy and industrialised on the way into the town from the camino. However as we walked up the hill towards the cathedral that towered up above the rest of the town, the street suddenly became cobbled and hey presto I was entering the picturesque medieval part of the town. I had already realised early in the camino that this was a feature of most of the towns I had encountered so far on the camino. Also the municipal albergues tended to be in these old areas which was useful and avoided having to spend ages trekking around trying to find it.  The albergue was at the top of the hill at the other end of town.

The albergue in Viana

It was set beside an old ruined church with a grassy knoll dotted with majestic horse chestnut trees. The setting was magnificent in that there was a vista of a view towards Rioja province which we were now entering and away in the misty distance, Logrono, the capital. It was also a sunny hot day quintessentially reminiscent of Mediterranean holidays taken in the past. The afternoon hummed with the heat and I wanted to book quickly into the albergue and then get out and soak up the sunflower yellow afternoon. Although the weather had been temperate during the camino, it had not been particularly sunny and warm as we were still in early/mid May. This was the first day where the sun had seemed to beat down a little on my back as I was walking. As the camino goes from east to west, the sun is always at your back until after midday which is useful for the hot summer months .If you leave early you can generally finish up walking by 2pm at the latest just as the sun is directly above you in the sky and can then take on a somewhat relentless aspect. So I wanted to make the most of this day.

As I checked in I fell into conversation with a man in his sixties who turned out to be from Sligo, near me. It was good to touch base with familiar place names and as it turned out familiar people. He know my cousin’s wife and her mother and father who had passed away in the last few years. I had also known her parents well and as we were waiting in the cool stone lobby queuing to check in, I felt my eyes fill up with tears as we talked about them. That is the way with the camino. It is not just a physical journey and sometimes the swirl of emotions and gentle spiritual release of attending Mass swam to the surface as was happening now, while talking to someone who knew those I had dearly regarded. He too seemed emotional as we talked about them as if the camino had also jostled things up to the surface for him too. One of the American women I had met en route back in Estella also pitched up and we all agreed to meet for dinner later. 

I left mundane tasks like having a shower, doing laundry and re arranging my paltry baggage, flung all in a locker and headed out. I gravitated towards the grassy knoll and the breath-taking view like most other people.

View from Viana over Rioja province in hazy afternoon sunshine

The area was surrounded by a stone wall that was part of the ruined church in the background. There were seats carved into  the wall creating charming nooks and crannies to hide away in. This late in the afternoon they had been warmed by the sun. Overhead swifts swooped and spun like boomerangs, chasing insects, the task of which was turning these birds whose feet never touch the ground during their lifetime into aerodynamic miracles. I sat into one of the seats with my book and gazed periodically out across Rioja province spread out beyond, hazy and indistinct as it would be until I started my walk into it the following day. For now I was delighted with this serendipitous discovery of such an idyllic setting when I had been so disheartened at the prospect of spending the night in a busy industrial town.  

And so it was that I spent the afternoon reading, writing postcards , dozing and marvelling at the swifts. I  alternated between the sun warmed nooks set into the ancient wall overlooking the vista or cooling off on the grass under the shady, sweeping chestnut trees , their candle shaped pink flowers an apt backdrop for the old ruined church.

Later that evening I met the others for dinner and we ate at very good value outside a restaurant on a narrow cobbled street under the auspices of the grand cathedral. It was the best meal that I had so far – simple tomato and olive pasta to start and then hake stuffed with red peppers followed by ice cream – well an ice lolly. At the end of the day this was not Italy and so far ice cream did not seem to be a speciality of northern Spain. And after all, it was a pilgrims menu – less than €10 for 3 courses. It was a memorable afternoon and evening - one of those holiday memories that always stay with you, warm sun, that feeling of languor where an evening stretches pleasantly ahead, meeting other people and of course good food and the best of red wines – a few glasses of Rioja in deference to the province we were about to enter the next day.