Red rocks and a long day! This one started cold and stayed that way. Dry, at least. From Logroño centro in the early morning light, across a railway and thru suburbs until – wonderfully – reaching a large urban park with a reservoir of some sort, with hombres setting up for what looked to be fishing.

A fair whack of walking alongside and across motorways, before reaching another interesting little town, Navarrete. While small, it hosts an absolutely incredible church of what could be described as cathedral-scale, with highly elaborate golden decorations all above the altar. In pride of place, a statue of Madonna and Child.

From this brief respite, back into the wilds and continuing what seemed at times to be an inspection of Spain’s motorways. My verdict? They’re pretty neat.

Since Navarette’s about 12km in, the remaining 16-ish km of this leg is town-less (better than a town being leg-less?). One little climb up a quite beautiful hill in the final few miles, with views in both directions, and then gradually down while approaching Nájera.

The rushing rio in town is crossed by a modern footbridge and a much more striking older all-purpose structure that is, apparently, built upon Roman foundations. Aren’t we all, in the end?

What was – and remains – striking about Nájera is an incredible band of red rock that rises starkly behind the town on its western flank. Houses and other buildings seem to directly abut this maybe 20-30m high red wall. And what’s more amazing is there are ancient human-formed caves in the face of this red cliff. I couldn’t find a way to gain access, though to be fair that simply means I walked around for ten or fifteen minutes then gave up and searched for dinner instead.

Only flat note about this town – like many other pilgrims I’d planned to stay in the municipal albergue but it’s closed for upgrades as per the sign on the door shown below.

Anyroad. Very happy those two long days are in the rear-view mirror of this journey, and looking forward to a deep restorative sleep tonight!

Stats for today:

• 27.1km
• 426m ascent
• 338m descent
• 4 times we crossed over or under motorways