Latest / WCBH / Day 14 - Camino Francés: Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada

Transcript

Day 14 - Camino Francés: Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada · WCBH

• 0:25
  Good morning. Day 14, two weeks on the Camino Path now.
• 0:31
  Very much into the swing of things.
• 0:33
  Walking 21 kilometers today from Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
• 0:42
  Beautiful blue skies, sunny days.
• 0:47
  I'm not jinxing it. I think we're in for some good walking weather.
• 0:51
  So much so, So I've started the day with a jacket on, but it's been removed, the big thick jacket,
• 0:58
  in the first 10 minutes, where most days it's on for most of the day and might
• 1:04
  be off if we're walking up a hill.
• 1:08
  But it's big blue skies. In fact, the horizon seems to be so much further away
• 1:15
  now, possibly because of the countryside.
• 1:18
  There are some large mountains off in the distance, but we're just walking through
• 1:22
  these rolling hills vineyards,
• 1:25
  a little bit of livestock, but we just came around the corner and then what
• 1:31
  was hidden from our view and then suddenly appeared again was these mountains
• 1:38
  off to our right and the peaks are covered in snow.
• 1:45
  Spectacular something we're not used to seeing in darwin something that does
• 1:50
  look spectacular where we are now it's dry it's hot,
• 1:54
  hotter than what it has been looking off
• 1:57
  in the distance and still seeing snow it's an amazing sight something I wish
• 2:01
  you could capture in a postcard you take a photo but it never quite does it
• 2:04
  justice so as I said we're walking through the vineyards definitely wine country
• 2:09
  here and yesterday we were speculating around the seasons and what's done when.
• 2:18
  What we didn't say is we walked through some beautiful wine growing country,
• 2:24
  and we thought, oh, this is at altitude, pristine conditions.
• 2:28
  This is the expensive bottles of wine, surely. The grapes from this area.
• 2:33
  Now, this must be, if you're getting a good bottle of wine.
• 2:37
  And then we walked, hola, buon diaz.
• 2:41
  Then we walked a bit further and came past the cement works with vines right
• 2:47
  next to the cement works.
• 2:48
  We sort of put that down. That's the cheap bottle of wine.
• 2:51
  Must be a... And then we went into the industrial area.
• 2:56
  And the vineyards didn't look quite so appealing.
• 3:00
  That must be the really cheap bottle of wine. So I'm sure it all ends up in
• 3:05
  the one place and et cetera, unless it's all done on site.
• 3:10
  But some of the grapes are grown in really picturesque country,
• 3:15
  which I'm sure they use in the marketing campaigns.
• 3:19
  And then others are grown next to the cement works or next to the industrial areas,
• 3:24
  which probably doesn't feature on on the
• 3:27
  label so in terms of
• 3:30
  what we were discussing yesterday around when
• 3:33
  things are done we saw some guys out in the
• 3:36
  field pruning we thought they
• 3:39
  might be sort of in the back end of the pruning because most of
• 3:42
  the bushes had been done and they were working
• 3:45
  hard they had a lot of a lot of fields to cover and they'd covered most of it
• 3:51
  but looking it up this is certainly not from my knowledge but looking it up
• 3:54
  pruning typically takes place december january february to get off the old growth
• 4:01
  and promote that new growth,
• 4:04
  bud burst which is the term given to where the new life is start to come through
• 4:11
  on the vines that's typically late march to april so we're mid-march now and if some of these.
• 4:22
  Vines you never know we might get to see bud burst as
• 4:25
  we walk along maybe another week or so which
• 4:29
  would be quite amazing to see and then
• 4:32
  flowering may and june and then the ripening of the grapes in july and august
• 4:39
  and then the harvest september and october and then i suppose the cycle just
• 4:45
  repeats itself again so we actually did pretty well yesterday sort of speculating,
• 4:51
  when things would happen, we thought.
• 4:53
  It would be sort of the summertime when there's harvest, and we were right.
• 4:59
  So we're here in Santo Domingo. I wanted to do some updates across the day,
• 5:05
  but the crosswinds were just so strong, wouldn't have been able to pick anything up in the microphone.
• 5:12
  It seemed the first quarter of the day, we were somewhat protected from those
• 5:19
  winds, but the last three quarters of the day, there was just winds.
• 5:24
  Whatever direction we seemed to be facing, we seemed to be walking into the
• 5:27
  winds. and they were cold as well.
• 5:30
  You know, we'd go up a mountain or up a hill and we'd be walking into the winds,
• 5:36
  down, winds still were heading us.
• 5:39
  Even if we changed direction, they seemed to just get us whatever way we were
• 5:45
  going, they were quite strong.
• 5:48
  Met a nice father and son walking along the trail today from the United States.
• 5:55
  He's recently retired and the son's just finished college and that's their reason and timing for,
• 6:03
  walking the Camino ours is long service leave the the hills were well we thought
• 6:11
  actually we were going into a day that was going to be relatively flat we feel
• 6:15
  lied to by the guidebook or the guide app,
• 6:20
  it was non-stop hills and descents.
• 6:23
  It was rolling, but the hills just
• 6:25
  seemed to go on forever and had a multi-kilometer build-up and then...
• 6:35
  A soft ascent and then they would build up again. So it did feel like you were
• 6:40
  on the Stairmaster all day.
• 6:42
  So there was a fair amount of legwork today, but definitely feeling fitter and
• 6:48
  stronger and greater stamina for getting up these hills.
• 6:53
  Over years and years and years of farming, and maybe the winds as well,
• 6:58
  and maybe, you know, the farming machinery,
• 7:01
  the hills have just got this beautiful rounded
• 7:05
  shape doesn't look
• 7:08
  natural at all it looks like it has been sculpted over
• 7:11
  many many years and yeah the
• 7:15
  colors you know there'd be it's imagine a path
• 7:18
  that runs through the middle that's that's sandy and then
• 7:21
  on either side of the path was just green
• 7:25
  rolling fields after we got out
• 7:27
  of the vineyard section we got into this green rolling field section
• 7:31
  and it was almost like there'd be
• 7:33
  a section that would be a light green here next to
• 7:36
  it would be a section that is a dark green and then to the side of it would
• 7:41
  be a section that was brown but with green coming through another section would
• 7:46
  be brown because it would you know it would just been seeded and it was just
• 7:51
  this patchwork of of fields after fields after fields.
• 7:58
  Almost as if you went to a carpet store and they had shag carpet there that
• 8:03
  had been, velvet carpet that had been vacuumed in different directions.
• 8:09
  And that was sort of the run of how the seeds had been planted. Very picturesque.
• 8:15
  It was a nice walk. The hills made it a little challenging and the winds made
• 8:21
  it a little bit more challenging, but it was a nice 21-kilometer walk today.
• 8:27
  Walking along, start of the day I did listen to the NRL that was being played
• 8:33
  Friday night in Australia, South's first Roosters and well done to Alex Johnston
• 8:39
  on picking up his 213th try.
• 8:42
  Equaling and then surpassing the great Ken Irvine in the game against the Roosters.
• 8:49
  Roosters went on to win that game but what an achievement there 213
• 8:53
  tries and he's probably got a little
• 8:56
  bit more football in front of him so he should be able to build on on that before
• 9:01
  he retires but yeah great scenes coming out of of that game so enjoyed that
• 9:06
  so we've got another big day tomorrow hot shower recovery and we'll do it all again tomorrow.