Grit, Views, and Marine Stories

The day began with a jolt from my alarm at 7 a.m., after a restless night. I barely slept, awake from midnight until 4 a.m., my mind refusing to quiet. To ease the burden of the 20-mile trek to Santo Domingo, I arranged for my bag to be transported ahead. The landscape of the Camino Frances has become familiar by now—endless wheat fields, orderly vineyards, and scattered wildflowers. It’s beautiful, no question, but after eleven days, the repetition wears thin. As a seasoned hiker, I’ve come to expect this shift; the trail is less about novelty and more about the steady rhythm of movement and the views that unfold. I walk for the physical challenge and the chance to take in the scenery, not for some grand epiphany.

Around six miles into the day, I arrived in Nájera, a town that always feels like a reward. The river cuts through its center, reflecting the red cliffs that tower in the background. I stopped at a small grocery store to pick up a bag of chips and a cold Heineken, a small treat to break up the morning. I’ve stayed in Nájera twice before, drawn to the municipal hostel right on the riverbank, its setting hard to beat. The town carries a deep history, dating back to the 10th century when it served as a key seat for the kings of Navarre. The Monastery of Santa María la Real, with its royal tombs and Gothic cloisters, stands as a reminder of that era.

Leaving Nájera, the path climbed steeply until it leveled out onto a plateau of vineyards, their green rows stretching into the distance. In Azofra, I stopped into a store for another beer before continuing to Cirueña. I remembered Cirueña from my 2014 hike—a failed golf course community, a casualty of the 2008 recession. Now, nearly 20 years old, it’s showing its age. The houses, now mostly occupied, stand in eerie silence during the day, the infrastructure crying out for a pressure washer and some landscape work. All these years later and it still feels like a ghost town.

The stretch from Cirueña to Santo Domingo was the highlight of the day. Vast wheat fields, their green tips swaying in the breeze, blended into vineyards that seemed to roll on forever. The scene was so perfectly pastoral—gentle hills under a wide sky—that I half-expected to see the Windows XP logo in the corner.

I reached Santo Domingo just after 3 p.m. While looking for my hostel, I walked past a café and ran into Alex, who introduced me to Bill, a man from Houston with a firm handshake. I checked into my hostel, dropped my gear, and returned to the café for an early dinner: spaghetti carbonara, meatballs, a glass of Rioja wine, and a slice of apple pie.

Over dinner, I learned that Bill was also a Marine. He served as an artillery officer in the post-Vietnam era and spent time at 29 Palms, a place I know well. We traded stories from our time in the Corps, laughing at the quirks of military life that haven’t changed in the 30 years between our service. His son, a colonel select and also an artilleryman, carries on the family tradition.

Alex and Bill later went to visit the cathedral, built by Santo Domingo de la Calzada, a saint known for constructing bridges and hospitals for pilgrims. I opted to rest but made plans with Bill to meet at 8 a.m. tomorrow to walk to Belorado together. From there, I’ll push on another seven miles to Villafranca.