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| Map at La Juderia Albergue showing the route of our detour |
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| Walking to Azofra L-R: Heinz, Toby, Andre and David |
Leaving Nájera,
David and I now planned a two day detour off the main Camino Francés route; we would continue to Azofra then follow an
optional detour mentioned in John Brierley’s book to see the Cistercian Abbey
at Cañas. After this we would walk
onwards for about another 10 km to reach San Millán de la Cogolla to visit the UNESCO World Heritage Monasteries of San Millán de Suso and San Millán de Yuso. It would mean doing
a daring walk off-piste, so to speak and leaving behind our new pilgrim friends
and the security of seeing the reassuring yellow Camino arrows to guide us, but
we still felt we would be visiting historical sites very important to the
development of the Camino and I was very excited to see Suso and Yuso
Monasteries as I had read about their cultural importance in Spanish cultural and
monastic history and had been pouring over maps for months planning the detour!
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| Omelette baguette at Azofra |
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| Ancient albergue at Azofra |
In the end despite our slight
nerves about going off the Camino, the detour worked well and we can recommend
it. Including our stop to visit the abbey at Cañas,
it took us about 7 hours and 30 minutes to walk the
roughly 17 km from Nájera to San
Millán de la Cogolla and although all the walking was on roads, they were quiet
with relatively little traffic.
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| The long road to Cañas |
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| The Cistercian Abbey of Cañas |
Leaving Nájera
we ascended a small hill into woods which quickly gave way to expansive views
of snow-capped mountains in the vicinity of San
Millán. Heinz caught up with us and we passed the time chatting about his
dislike of Angela Merckel, the Irish economy and his trip last year to Everest
Base Camp. We discovered that he was an interior light designer in Stuttgart
and since he had a good team who worked for him, he could take long trips each
Spring to rejuvenate himself. Andre and Toby passed us for the last time as we
approached Azofra, we knew we wouldn’t see them or Heinz again due
to our detour to San Millán.
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| Looking towards the apse at Cañas |
In Azofra we stopped for
breakfast with Heinz and ordered a kind of egg omelette baguette which turned
out to be of prodigious size, but we reckoned it would fortify us for the uphill
walk ahead to San Millán!
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| Alabaster windows |
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| 16th Century retable |
Saying goodbye to Heinz we
took a few minutes to examine the parish church of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles
with it’s nesting stork standing sentinel on the tower. We were interested to
note the Spanish Civil War memorial in the church porch (the first we had seen)
and also that at the back there was an adjoining little building which turned
out to be an ancient pilgrim albergue founded by Doña Isabel de Azofra in 1168.
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| Apse |
Leaving Azofra we now turned
off the Camino Francés and walked for
about 6 km to Cañas
via
the tidy, modern, but non-descript, town of Alesanco.
Beyond this, the 3 kilometres to Cañas
were fairly psychologically arduous as the road stretched straight ahead;
seemingly to the horizon.
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| East End |
However, we eventually reached Cañas and were pleased to find that the Abadía Cisterciense De Cañas was open. Indeed, it seemed at least
initially, that we were the only visitors to the abbey that morning as, the
lady in the ticket booth took us through to the abbey church and switched the
lights on to illuminate the aisle and retable. It was great to have the whole
church and cloister to ourselves and we enjoyed the great peace and serenity of
the place, despite the extreme cold of the day, which had also seeped into the
buildings and eventually reached our bones through the layers of clothing!
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| Romanesque Virgin |
In 1169 the monastery at Hayuela near Santo Domingo de
la Calzada and was given to the Cistercians by Count Don Lope Diaz de Haro
and his wife Aldonza Ruiz de Castro. The count was Second Lieutenant to the
Kings of Castille, Sancho III “The Desired” and his son Alfonso VIII. In 1170
Don Lope also donated Cañas and Canillas to the Cistercians for their nuns
to have a quieter place for their monastic life. Originally called the abbey of
Santa María de Cañas, it became known
as Santa María de San Salvador in the
17th Century to distinguish it from a hermitage with the same name
in the village. When the Count died in 1170, his wife and children joined the
nuns in the abbey.
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| Chapter House Door |
The abbey is particularly famous because St, Francis of
Assisi stayed here whilst on his way to Santiago on pilgrimage and it is the
birthplace of another famous Spanish saint Santo
Domingo de Silos.
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| Sepulchre of the founding abbess Doña Urraca López |
On entering the abbey church I was initially rather
confused; the gilded retable was situated unusually at the west end of the
church and not in the apse at the east end as one would normally expect.
However, it soon became clear that the 16th Century retable had been
moved to the east end in 1975 so that the austere pure gothic lines of the
abbey church, so characteristic of early Cistercian architecture, would be
fully appreciated. My eye was led down the church to the beautiful apse with its
vaulted ceiling. The windows were glazed with alabaster instead of glass, which
let in a milky white light of which St Bernard approved and said was symbolic
of the purity of heaven.
The church was built in two stages; the apse to the
transept in the 13th Century and the rest of the east end in the 16th
Century; the difference in the quality of the building work can be seen when
carefully examined as the later work looks rather inferior.
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| Mourners tearing their hair out in grief |
In the transept was a Romanesque statue of a seated virgin
in a very similar style to the one sitting in the cave at Nájera and in
excellent condition for it’s age; I particularly liked the base it sat on,
painted with panels of beasts.
We sat for a long time in the church, enjoying the peace,
God’s presence and reflecting on our journey thus far. I felt suddenly moved to
sing the hymn When I Survey the Wondrous
Cross and it cut through the silence and echoed off the vaults, highlighting
the marvellous acoustics of the vaulted space in which we sat and one could
imagine the nun’s praising God centuries before in Gregorian Chant.
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| Urraca being admitted to the abbey as a child |
Adjoining the abbey church was a fine cloister. For
someone like me, a lover of history, who has visited many ruined abbeys in
Britain and Ireland and especially my favourite – the ruined Cistercian Abbey
at Fountains in North Yorkshire, it was interesting to see a 12th
Century Abbey standing intact, unscathed by the Dissolution of the Monasteries
far away in Britain. It gave me an impression of the wealth of art and
architecture that Britain and Ireland have lost due to the Reformation, though
as I am an Evangelican Christian, I have mixed feelings as the Reformation to
my mind also swept away a lot of superstition and unbiblical practice too!
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| Cloister |
Off the cloister was the 13th Century Chapter
House, where nuns would have attended daily readings of the Rule of St
Benedict. The most remarkable sight in the Chapter House is the sepulchre of the
founding abbess Doña Urraca López de
Haro, said to be one of the finest sarcophagi in Spain. The effigy on top
is amazingly crisp and well preserved and the carvings on the sides showed a
funeral procession of bishops, abbots, acolytes, mourning women, noble ladies,
nuns and monks (some tearing their hair out in grief!). The base shows the
abbess’s soul rising from it’s shroud to be carried to heaven, whilst at the
head a carving shows Urraca entering
the abbey as a child.
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| 12th Century Statue of St John |
The original storehouse of the cloister has been turned
into a museum and relics room. Religious statues and most especially, relics of
dried blood, teeth and bones, don’t press any buttons for me, and there were
both in vast abundance, but my eye was caught by the rather interesting 12th
Century gilded statue of St. John and I was amused by the Baroque cherub,
clearly a detached orphan from some exuberant lost retable, who had a
bodybuilder’s physique and a matching reclining cool attitude to match!
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| Baroque cherub bodybuilder! |
The cold inside the abbey finally got to us and we
pressed on towards San Millán, eager
to warm
up again. We had hoped there might be a café or shop selling food and warm
drinks at Cañas but we were out of
luck. As we left the village I was delighted to see a vibrant yellow Acacia in
full bloom – it might have been a non-native slightly invasive Australian
species, but it’s colour brightened the increasingly overcast day.
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| Acacia |
The road ran on and on with a slowly ascending gradient
until we reached a fairly exposed roundabout. By now the egg omelette baguette
from Azofra had worn off and the rain, which had been threatening for some
time, finally started. We stepped behind the roundabout road barrier for a
moment and I donned my poncho. As I stood there I suddenly had a mental and
physical slump – I felt that I just couldn’t go on for a few minutes and I
stood there miserably dripping in the rain. David however, thankfully produced
some 70% dark chocolate and after I had eaten about twice as much of this as
David, had some hazelnuts, fruit and a drink, I began to revive and feel ready
to go on.
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| The view from where I slumped! |
The road now wound it’s way downhill for a considerable
distance and we gritted our teeth and marched on in the rain. It was arduous
and interminable and very unpleasant, but after about one and a half hours of
this, we reached a café at Berceo and were able to have Wine and Tapas. My
poncho had worked well and I was only damp from sweat, not rain.
Fortified we made a finally push to the guest house we
had booked Hospederia la Calera. Unfortunately
it was at the far side of San Millán and
we had to walk right through the village in the now heavy rain, past Yuso
Monastery and then on for about a further half kilometre.
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| View of San Millán and Berceo |
Reaching the guest house, we
found the open reception empty, but finding a number to ring, the owner arrived
in a 4 x 4 jeep and seemed surprised to see that we had walked. He gave us a
lift back to San Millán, as it turned out that he had another guesthouse right
beside Yuso Monastery.
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| Shepherd leading his sheep off the road at San Millán |
The guesthouse was very
comfortable, warm and modern and we were glad to strip out of our damp cold
clothes and have warm showers.
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