It was cold and windy when we left Pamplona. It had rained the night before and was threatening to rain more.
Anne was feeling a lot better after spending two nights in Pamplona at the Gran Hotel La Perla, a very un-pilgrim-like lodging:
She probably would have continued to stay at the hotel had she known what the day would bring.
La Perla is on Pamplona’s main square in the old part of the city. Leaving Pamplona, we walked out of the old quarter, through a business district, suburbs, and into fields outside the city. Gone were the woods and pastures that had led us into Pamplona.
Now, we were traveling over rolling hills.
The path would occasionally lead up to an a village or church set on a hill: 
The halfway point of the hike was a high ridge separating the basin that Pamplona sits in from the valley where Puente La Reina is located, our destination for the night. It was a steep hike up to the top of a ridge lined by windmills. In the background is the ridge that we would walk over, with the windmills lining the ridge barely visible:
At the top of the ridge was a sculpture dedicated to the peregrinos:
There was also a monument to the citizens of Navarre murdered by Franco’s supporters during the Spanish Civil War. Navarre is the Spanish district that we had been crossing since entering Spain three days ago:
This is the view from the top of the ridge back towards Pamplona:
And this is the view towards Puente la Reina:
During the walk, we fell in with a Latvian. He is part of a large Camino demographic, Europeans who vacation on the Camino. The Latvian had set aside ten days to walk the Camino, with no particular goal. Earlier, we had met a woman in her thirties from Bordeaux who was on a six-day vacation on the Camino. It was her eighth trip, and she too was just seeing how far she could travel in six days. For this group, the Camino is a scenic hike with good food, good wine, good company, and a bed at the end of the day. So far, we have always found good company on the Camino. Good food and wine are a little less certain. And, as we were about to discover, a bed at the end of the day cannot be counted on at all.
Several miles outside of Puente de la Reina, we passed a bus unloading a church group of twenty elderly Germans from Hamburg onto the Camino. They were spending ten days on the Camino and were ending their first day in Puente la Reina after a short walk. That was not good news. A church group surely had hotel reservations, which meant that at least twenty beds in Puente la Reina were already spoken for.
Sure enough, all the hotels in Puente la Reina were full.
These pictures show why staying in Puente la Reina is in such demand. Here is the foot bridge that the town is named for:
Here is the town’s Calle Mayor:
It was late in the day, and I sat at a table in front of a restaurant and began calling the albergues listed in our guidebook. Nothing. Then I called the hotels and albergues in the town up the road, a not-insignificant 5 km walk, especially at the end of a long day of walking. Nothing there either. Anne looked unhappy.
Finally I called the last albergue in the guidebook, which it described as having only group sleeping. The person answering the phone at the albergue said they had room but that he would not take a reservation. He said that I needed to come over right away.
Here is the albergue:
Despite what the guidebook said, the albergue had private rooms. We got the last one. Not the Gran Hotel La Perla, but Anne is smiling:
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