What did we learn since the last episode?  Bring an eye cover and earplugs to help you sleep at night!  After another less than restful night we carried on from Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada.  One of the great things we found about walking the Camino is that even after a bad nights sleep or when you're feeling tired or a little bit off you soon shrug all that off once you start walking and live in the moment, enjoying the journey. Today we answer the age old question, why did the chicken live in the church?  We sample all of the delicious baked treats Santo Domingo ..read more

The heat wave continues but now there's wine, air conditioning & ice cream so we'll call that a win.  Today we walk from Sansol to Logrono and we enter the La Rioja region, many of you will have heard the name as they make some fantastic wines in this region. Logrono is a lovely town and one of the places that we would have gladly spent an extra day in just hanging out and enjoying the food and wine and wandering around town.  Unfortunately, we were on a schedule and our first rest day was a bit further down the road so we only had one afternoon to enjoy. In this episode we discu ..read more

We left Estella less than well rested after an extremely hot & noisy night, but once we hit the road again and started walking all that tiredness really fell away pretty quickly and we were looking forward to free-flowing wine at the Irache Monastery wine fountain, spolier... it was less than free flowing... In this episode we wait for free wine only to be disappointed, run into the law (Civil Guard) and get away with just a passport stamp as well as defying the guidebook and powering past the recommended stop in Los Arcos, adding an extra 8km onto the end of the day to reach Sansol for th ..read more

It was hard to leave the amazing treehouse accommodation in the morning but after climbing down we were soon on our way again. The walk today wasn't hard, it was reasonably flat and not too long but the heat wave finally caught up to us with peak temperatures of 41 celcius. Walking in those temperatures is tough, but it didn't really cool down at night and sleeping when it's till 39 celcius and you don't even have a fan is just about impossible. We ended up wandering around Estella in the afternoon trying to find anywhere cool to sit and pass the time as our apartment was like an oven.  W ..read more

Leaving Pamplona in the morning there were still groups of revelers in the streets who had been out all night and we had to maneuver around large water trucks with high pressure hoses that were starting to clean down the streets. We had our first emergency blister stop in the morning (which was gross) but we also got coffee which made it better. We met the Korean group of Pilgrim's who we had seen the first few days and continued to see most days until the end of our walk. This was a long walking day with the extra detour that we took but it had a lot of variety as we moved out of the Pamplona ..read more

Pamplona is the first larger city that you will hit on the Camino and many guides that we read said that this is a good place to take a first rest day, but we said NO, NO rest days!  We're hardcore and don't need a rest after only 3 days. This actually worked out pretty well as we arrived right on the last day of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, the last bull run had finished that morning and the town was absolutely manic with people celebrating, parades and discount booze throughout the streets. Unfortunately everything other than those festivities was basically closed, all the albe ..read more

We're sitting in this really quaint courtyard in Roncesvalles opposite the church, enjoying a quieter morning. It's 7:30am already before we start our walk today. It's a little bit of a slower start after the aches and pains of yesterday and it's about 22 kilometers to Zubiri today for our next stop. Supposed to be a little bit flatter, which is nice. Today we're slightly more prepared and actually have coffee and breakfast before we set out. There are several small towns that we pass through today with plenty of opportunities for rest stops and snacks, it feels completely different to the fir ..read more

It’s 6.30am in St Jean Pied de Port near the Pilgrim’s Office, the sun is up and we are ready to kick off our 900+ km journey.  We follow the road through the village to find the path which leads up the Napoleon Way and across the Pyrenees. The first day of this route was clearly meant to be a test, it's a relentless up hill climb for the first half of the day, the Refuge de Orisson appearing like a beautiful mirage at around the 8km mark with the promise of coffee and breakfast with an astounding view out over the mountains. After climbing for most of the day, the path drops steeply for ..read more

We think the Camino de Santiago is one of the world's best travel experiences, you may not of heard of it, it's only been popular for a thousand years or so. In this first episode of Is This The Way we talk a little about the history of the Camino, the present day Camino, who we are and why we quit our jobs, left our home and walked 933km across Spain and why you should do it too! This is our first podcast and the daily entries were recorded wherever we stopped as we walked the Camino so the audio may be a little variable at times as may the quality of our presentation but stick with us as we ..read more