Logroño

This is not a site that you see very often and it really is a wine fountain!

 This a generous gift to pilgrims from the Irache Winery.

 This is the wine fountain and you can just help yourself. Some people were obviously filling up their bottle being greedy.  Perhaps they had not tasted the wine and whilst it was drinkable I would take advantage of their generosity. But several Japanese, Chinese and Korean pilgrims filled a bottle each but then again perhaps their taste buds or sense of what is a reasonable amount to take is not the same as ours.

 There was a choice of two paths, a low flat path or one that snaked into the hills which was my option.

 There was some dramatic scenery with wheat fields, police groves and seep pine forested slopes.

 And wide open rolling countryside.

 Then at Los Arcos where I stayed the night there was the church...it's bell tower...

 ...and inside the organ pipes...

 ...a view down the nave to the altar and the reredos, the ornamental screen behind the altar with the Black Virgin with the Latin inscription 'I am black but I am beautiful' so despite the millennia between us and the builders of this 12th century church, there may not be so many differences...

 ...a view of the cloisters...

 ... a side chapel...

 ...and the gate from the town from which the El Camino heads towards Santiago.

 A view across the fields to the next village.

 The church in Torres del Rio, Santa Maria de Sulpulchre modelled on the church in Jerusalem and a link with the Knights Templar.

 A way side stop with a pile of stones set on top of each other.

 And something very unusual in a Catholic country, a Shaman prayer or wish tree.