Day 3

Day 3 saw us walking from Zubiri to Pamplona, a journey of 20.9km.

The going wasn’t too tricky, a mostly downhill walk, although some elevation gain of around 360m. Having said that, rain overnight had made a lot of the ground muddy and slippery, so watching our footing was essential.

We started the day in style, eating our wild boar head and venison chorizos on Zubiri’s Puente de la Rabia (rabies bridge), said to cure any animals of their diseases should they pass under its arches. I suspect if we’d dropped our chorizo and watched it float under, the wild boar would not have been cured of its death.

Passing by the town’s magnesium factory, we faced a little light drizzle, but nothing worth covering up for.

We stayed in the old part of Pamplona, home to many a place selling pintxos (pronounced pinch-oss) – small snacks, often open sandwiches. The standard bar pintxos were okay, but later we upgraded to a finer establishment and really went to town – pictures are below.

Day 4

Today we walked from Pamplona to Puente La Reina, a longer journey of 23.88km. While the start and end parts weren’t too bad, the middle section had a massive hill with a steep uphill gradient and an even steeper downhill gradient – so out came the walking poles to try and help out the knees.

It was also our first day using the ponchos after a flash shower that lasted all of 15 minutes… thankfully we all had easy access to our ponchos.