Torres del Río

The church door opens at six, sometimes earlier if the hospitalero wakes first. By half past, boots are already clumping across the stone nave, trekking poles propped like sheaves against the 12th-century wall. This is Torres del Río: 119 residents, one bar, one extraordinary temple, and a daily tide of footsore Brits who have walked 35 km from Logroño and need little more than a cold clarete and a place to hang socks.

A Templar geometry lesson

Forget the usual Spanish rectangle. The church of the Santo Sepulcro is an octagon, its Islamic-influenced ribs criss-crossing above your head in a star pattern that makes camera phones appear automatically. Built by Knights Templar who needed a quick, defensible shape, the church borrows from the Jerusalem original and adds a Spanish dash: brick instead of stone, horseshoe windows, a dome you can stare at until your neck hurts. The key sits on a hook in the albergue opposite; if you arrive after seven in the evening you will probably miss it, and the building stays locked until the next morning's mass.

Inside, the only lights are the slots in the drum. Sunbeams slide across the floor like slow clock hands, picking out carved capitals: lions, griffins, a pilgrim with blistered feet. There is no museum ticket, no audio guide, just a wooden box for coins and a plea for silence that most walkers observe because their feet are too sore to chat.

The sound of a village that survives on passing trade

Evening begins when the first rucksack thumps onto the plaza tables outside Hotel San Andrés. The menu hasn't changed in years: tuna and tomato salad, lamb shank that slips from the bone, flan wobbling in a pool of caramel. Unlimited Rioja arrives in earthenware jugs; the measure is "stop when you feel polite". Brits who have eaten nothing but trail mix all day tackle the three courses, then order a second jug and compare blister dressings. Conversation switches between Cheltenham and Cork, Berlin and Bilbao, all united by the yellow arrow that led them here.

By 21:30 the plaza is quiet enough to hear the river Linares over the low wall. The village shop shut at seven, the albergue terrace lights are switched off at ten, and anyone still hungry is out of luck. Bring earplugs: the church bell marks the hour through the night, and at 06:00 it rings six times without mercy.

A circular walk that fits between breakfast and check-out

Torres del Río is not a full-day halt; it is a comma in a longer sentence. Still, the morning loop is worth the boots. Follow the Camino markers west for twenty minutes until wheat fields replace houses, then cut down the farm track signed "Río". You reach the water under a canopy of poplars where the temperature drops five degrees and crayfish dart between stones. Turn back along the opposite bank and the village appears suddenly, its terracotta roofs stacked like bread loaves, the octagonal church tower poking above them like an egg cup.

The whole circuit takes fifty minutes, just long enough to justify a second coffee before hoisting the pack. Spring brings poppies among the barley; autumn smells of crushed fennel and wood smoke from someone pruning vines.

Cash, cards and other fantasies

Plastic is useless here. The supermarket beneath Albergue Casa Mariela stocks Kit-Kats and Nescafé for the nostalgic, but it bolts its shutter between two and five. The nearest cash machine is eleven kilometres away in Los Arcos; if you discover an empty purse at nine in the evening you will be washing dishes for your bed. Most walkers keep a twenty-euro note tucked in their passport for emergencies; the note inevitably buys breakfast and a stamp in the credencial.

Need a taxi out? Phone the Estella radio-taxi cooperative the night before. They will send a Mercedes with 280,000 km on the clock and a driver who speaks enough English to ask which UK airport you flew from. The fare to Pamplona rail station is about €65; split four ways it feels almost reasonable.

When to come, when to keep walking

April and late-September give you green fields, mild afternoons and empty dormitories. In August the temperature can top 38 °C by noon; the village fountain becomes a laundry, a shower and a footbath. Holy Years on the Camino double the nightly head-count; if you crave silence, check the Jacobean calendar first. Winter is genuinely cold at 600 m altitude, and some albergues simply close. A snowy octagon photographs well, but you may be the only person inside it.

Combine, don't isolate

Torres del Río fits between larger stops, not instead of them. Approach from Estella in the morning, linger for the church and lunch, then carry on four hours to Los Arcos. That schedule places the village where it has always belonged: a breather on a longer road, a place to glance upwards, refill water bottles and remember why you started walking in the first place.