My walking sticks. They're my new best friend. Now I have three new best friends – my boots, my backpack, and my walking sticks.

I have resolutely refused to adopt sticks – I have seen these pilgrims using them, and I've thought they look like stick insects. Well, I've now joined the colony.

They're fantastic. Why didn't someone tell me about them before?

Well, actually they did but I liked my staff – it had style. It had romance. Those stick insect things were too technical. And they made that sound on cobblestones – clack clack clack. Like something with an exoskeleton crushing its mandibles.

Man o man they're good. They haul you up hills, and they act as a brake coming down hills. They supposedly take 25 – 30% load weight off your legs, and transfer it to the upper body.

I needed them today.

I woke early, after my rest day in Plampona. I got 7 hrs sleep – the first decent sleep since I've been away, which means the jet lag is finally gone. I left the Albergue at 6am, and quickly adapted to using the sticks. The sun doesn't come up here at the moment till about 7:30am, so the first hour and a half was in the dark.

I left the suburbs of Plampona fast – doing about 5kms/hr, thanks not only to the sticks but also the lighter backpack. 1.75kgs makes a big difference.

Soon Alto del Perdon loomed ahead – by this stage I'd already done about 10kms, and began the climb. My knee was twinging, but holding up ok, thanks in large part to the sticks, which enabled me to keep a lot of weight off. The Nurofen was also working too – and I very soon got to the top.

Going down the other side was harder – very steep with loose stones and rocks. Put a lot of pressure on the knees, but again the sticks helped.

There weren't many people on the path today – some Korean girls, and a few Germans. Once I got down the other side of the mountain I stopped in at small place to have breakfast – the most delicious fried eggs and slices of pork, with crunchy chips and a bowl of pimento soup – all for the princely sum of €8.

I then walked through to Puenta la Reina – a beautiful medieval town. By this stage it was 12:30pm – I'd been walking 6 and a half hours, and had covered about 23 kms.

I found a little pub off the main square and had a half roast chicken, and 4 local ciders. I forgot that ciders in this part of the world are quite alcoholic, so I got a bit pissed. And I still had another 10kms to walk.

Everyone in the pub was watching the formula 1 Grand Prix. They love their sport in Spain.

I then pushed on to this little hilltop town – Ciraqui- – by this stage it was very hot, I had a gutful of roast chicken and 4 alcoholic ciders, and needless to say the last section was a bit of a slog, made more so by a gnarly hill of Mt. Misery proportions. It was hard going.

I'm now in this little Albergue opposite the towns church. €10 a night, and €9 for the evening meal. The laundry facilities leave a bit to be desired, but hey –

My knee is swollen so I'm icing it now, before dinner. It did 33 hard kms today, which was a bit naughty of me pushing it like that, but I wanted to walk after the rest day.

I might take it easier tomorrow –

But then again, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll get to know my new best friend a little more…

Today I didn’t walk. I rested my knee. It’s driven me nuts. All I want to do is walk. But I figure it’s the responsible thing to do.

I said goodbye to my two mates – Balazs and Lazlo, both from Hungary. We shared a cab from Biarritz airport to St. Jean earlier in the week, along with a Dutch lass named Rosa, and we’ve bumped into each other a few times since. Because of the shared experience of hardship, friendships quickly develop.

However, i like to walk on my own. I like to stop and take photos when i want to, and not feel obliged to meet someone else’s pace. i also like to be alone to think, and to take in the beauty of the place. Because there’s no doubt some of the country is spectacular.

My knee settled down a bit overnight. The swelling reduced somewhat, and when I went out walking around town today, the pain was still present, but not as bad as yesterday. However, it hasn’t gone away, and I hope it remains manageable pain, not pain that will curtail the walk.

I posted forward to Santiago some stuff that I don’t think I’ll need – thermals, wind stopper vest, gaiters and a book that I won’t finish. All up it came in at 1.75 kgs! That’s a big chunk off the weight of my backpack, which should now be around the 7.5 kgs, without food and water. My knees will be very thankful!

I then visited the Cathedral, which was small but evocative, and had fried calamari tapas for lunch. There was a big demonstration in the main square here at lunch time, and some people were wearing paper mâché outfits.

Tomorrow I’m back out on the road, this time with my new walking poles instead of my trusty stick. I love my stick, and I’ll be sad to leave it behind. But tomorrow is a big climb up to Alto del Perdon – and evidently an even stiffer descent. So perhaps my new walking sticks will help.

I don’t like hanging around. I want to get out and keep walking. I suspect a one or two day rest isn’t going to make much difference with my knee – it probably needs 6-8 weeks. And that ain’t gonna happen, to use the vernacular.

So, the Alto del Perdon tomorrow, or Hill of Forgiveness.

I hope my knee will forgive me.

Today would have been one of the most glorious walks of my life, except that i was in pain. My knee. My damn knee.

I kept asking myself, what kind of twisted logic was I employing in thinking that my crook knee would only get better with a brisk walk over the Pyrenees?

Pyre-knees.

Today was about working through pain. I did 22kms limping like I was a suffering pilgrim. When I finally got to Pamplona, after 6 hrs of walking, my knee had swollen out to the size of a small grapefruit. I couldn't put my full weight on it. But you know what, I'm going to finish this Camino even if it means wearing a titanium leg for the rest of my life. As long as I can out one foot in front of the other, I'm keeping going.

There are obvious lessons for me to learn with this – and perhaps one of them is that I should have listened to my body 6 weeks ago when this pain first presented on a 32 km training hike.

So, anyway, the bloke who runs the Albergue here in Pamplona immediately put ice on it, and I then hobbled to the Farmacia and got some Nurofen and some pain killing gel, and this evening now I'm feeling a bit better.

The other thing I did was get a set of walking poles. The experienced walkers here advised it – said that it took about 25-30% weight load off the knees. I've resisted this up to now – I don't think they look very elegant, I've seen these hard core walkers with their dual sticks and thought they looked like insects. Clack clack clack.

I like the romance and style of a pilgrim's staff.

But right now, this is not about style, this is about getting to the end without the need for hospitalisation. That's not very stylish.

Apart from all that – today was magical. Clear blue skies, paths through magnificent woodland forests, streams that ran beside the track, with the occasional little waterfall. And Pamplona looks like a gorgeous little town.

I'll probably stay in Pamplona tomorrow and rest up. And let the Nurofen work its drug induced magic. And get some ice on it. And give some thought as to why I've brought this on myself. Why, after all this time and anticipation, am I making this so damn difficult?

I can only believe that it will right itself, and in a few weeks the remembrance of this pain will be merely a post on a blog.

Jet lag is pernicious. I've come to that conclusion. It's like a blood sucking mosquito that doesn't want to leave you alone. At least with a mosquito, you can nuke it with Mortein. With jet lag, you just have to let it mess with you until it gets bored.

I didn't sleep well again last night. About 4 hrs sleep, I reckon. Couldn't wait to get out on the road. Did my yoga at 5:30am – the knee seemed ok. Then left the refugio at 6:20am. It was still dark, and so used my head lamp to find my way through a beautiful forest with trees covered in lichen.

My light provided illumination for a young Korean couple who came with me the first 15kms or so. They were strange, which I guess is a national trait. Ergo Korean missile crisis. But I digress… It seemed they were sweethearts, but every now and then they'd stop and have a ding dong barney.

Wonderful how the Camino embues us all with warm gooey love and kindness.

Anyway, the plan was to walk to Espinal and have a coffee. That was something like 6.5kms from where we started. But of course it was too early, and everything was shut. Didn't actually get my coffee, and a jamon tortilla, until about 11am, after having walked about 12 kms. Not going to make that mistake again.

My knee though decided to be painful. Almost from the start, from when I left Roncesvalles, it gave me sharp stabbing pain. I thought once I'd warmed up, it would back off, but it didn't. If anything it got worse.

The day was 20kms of up and down mountains, mostly along bush tracks that were very muddy and slippery. The down sections were very painful on my knee. Going up wasn't so much a problem. I think I'll have to see a doctor or physio or something, because I don't want this pain to spoil this incredible walk.

I'm now in a private pensione in Zubiri. For €30 I've got my own room, wifi, a communal shower and laundry. and a nice comfy bed. I'm hoping that I can get a decent night's sleep and give my knee a good rest.

I knew today would be contentious when I woke up at 2:21am. This was not a good start. Why didn't I wake up at 2:22? That would have been propitious. That would have been the Universe telling me today was going to be a great day. Instead, the Universe diddled me out of a minute.

I didn't go back to sleep. And the wonderful Pilgrim's hostel where I was staying in St.Jean Pied de Port has a policy that you can't get out of bed until 6:45am – which is great because it means everyone gets their sleep before the toughest stage of the Camino.

But for me, it was torture! I had to lie in that bed for 4 hrs.

So at 6:30 I got up and went with one of the ladies running the hostel up to the bakery, to collect the bread for breakfast. And I saw these pilgrims setting off in the dark, heading up the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, some 30km away.

My plan had been to ease into my Camino – just do an easy 8kms today. But when the sun came up, and it was a beautiful day for walking, I decided to do the whole slog.

And let me state this very clearly, this was physically the hardest day of my life. I knew it was going to be tough, but man o man, it was TOUGH. It was like doing Mt. Misery 10 times. Worse. The inclines just didn't let up.

But it was also beautiful. Truly beautiful. The thawing snow meant that the streams were cascading, and the vegetation is just starting to kick in after winter.

But the jet lag meant that after about 20km going up, up, up, with my backpack 10kgs +, I just ran out of energy. I felt like those marathon runners who talk about hitting the wall. I mean, I had woken at 2:21am and hadn't gone back to sleep, so I was buggered. I mean BUGGERED.

Anyway, one foot in front of the other, and I got to Roncesvalles, after 8hrs walking. Or rather, climbing.

The other complication was my dodgy knee. It was giving me intermittent pain – not enough to stop me, but enough to make it very uncomfortable at times. I wonder how I'm going to hold up over the next 780 kms!

The pilgrims hostel in Roncesvalles is in an ancient hospital, but it's been totally modernised. Someone is doing my laundry for €2.70. These were the clothes that I wore from Sydney, so they were rank. The lady doing the washing needed protective gear because she was handling hazardous chemical waste.

The hostel is €10 for accommodation, and the same again for a 3 course meal. Strangely now that I'm here, and I've started the Camino, I don't feel tired. But after dinner, I'm sure I'm going to clunk out.

Anyway, I've started. And I've climbed over the Pyrenees. So I feel good. I hope the knee is ok tomorrow.

Note: these photos do not convey how steep this walk was today. An elevation of about 1200m I think!