Hail on the hilltop

On Saturday, Beza and I walked from Logrono to Alcanadre. The guides gave varying distances, from 32 km to 40 km, which was a pain in the arse because we had to time our walk to arrive in Alcanadre by 4.08 pm, which was when the first train back to Logrono was (the second and last train was at 7.25 pm).

We ended up arriving at about 4.20 pm, just missing the train and had to catch the train to Calahorra and a bus from Calahorra to Logrono.

But it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all, considering what other horror might have befallen us.

On the way to Alcanadre, we had to climb up a small mountain and when we reached the top, we saw this huge black cloud hovering over the horizon. It was about another two hours to the village and we hadn't seen signposts for the last six or seven kilometers, so thought we were lost.

Just when we were about to give up, we saw a beautiful yellow arrow on an abandoned barn marking the camino. (The Camino de Santiago is pretty well signposted and it's hard to get lost but we were doing this stage in reverse, which is a lot more complicated that it sounds.)

On Monday, when I read the papers, it turned out the massive black cloud we saw was the biggest hailstorm to hit La Rioja in decades. There were hailstones half a metre high in Alcanadre and surrounding villages and most of the wine crops were 100% damaged, which means no wine next year. Windshields, windows and glass doors were broken, the blinds and corrugated roofs had holes punched into them and everything was devastated.

I'm not sure if anyone was caught in the storm but I suppose it would've been quite uncomfortable to have hailstones the size of cricket balls pelting at your head.