Day 7 - Los Arcos to Viana - 19km

I was up and off before any of my friends in the morning. It was very good going at first, although there were fairly steep climbs into the villages/towns that I passed through. I suppose originally they were built on high ground for defense purposes. I was pleased to note that I was managing the hills much better and was usually able to get up at a steady pace without stopping so often. I think my preparation was paying off, so all those boring exercises at home were worth doing after all. My recovery time was very quick too, just a pause for a couple of minutes standing still enabled me to keep going.

Unfortunately my back was really giving me trouble, becoming more and more painful as I went on. I had to keep taking breaks at shorter and shorter intervals and was getting cramp when I took my rucksack off. When I stopped for a picnic lunch I decided to take a couple of paracetamol in order to get me through the next stretch. I think the rest and the tablets helped a little, but instead of trying to get to Logroño at 25km I decided to stop at Viana after 19km. I was getting rather concerned about this pain as nothing seemed to make a difference and each day it was a bit worse. I began to wonder how it was going to affect my Camino. Rather than give up there was an option of using the rucksack transportation service offered in some places, but for me that would have been the very last option. To me this walk without carrying my own pack would feel like cheating. I know people do use this service, and they have their own reasons, I´m not condemning them, merely saying what felt right for me personally.

The albergue in Viana was in a converted monastic building with three-tier bunks! I reckoned I was lucky to get a middle one. The dorm was small, only nine bunks in all, and appeared to be full of elderly Frenchmen when I arrived. I claimed my bunk then went out to relax in a courtyard with shady trees and lovely views into the distance. I hadn´t seen anyone I knew all day, so it was nice to bump into a few familiar faces when I went to wander round the town later. Apparently this was the town where Cesare Borgia died.

I decided to eat in that night and after some shopping went back to the albergue. It had completely filled up while I was out, and there was a mattress on the floor in my dorm, where half the elderly men appeared to have been replaced by women, and another in the refectory. At least these people had been given somewhere to sleep, not told to walk on to the next town. I was pleased to find I wasn´t the only female, I was still getting used to the mixed dorm, mixed shower and mixed toilet aspect of the whole business. Some places had separate showers and toilets for men and women, but nearly everywhere the dorms were mixed, even in a parochial albergue.

My back and legs were painful during the night, so I decided to walk only as far as was comfortable the next day, even if it was for just a few kilometers. The possibility of worsening my problem and causing some sort of damage just wasn´t worth the risk.