But they are not happy about it.
Charlie: The Camino Frances, which we are taking, starts in France at St Jean Pied de Port. The first day is very hard going through the Pyrenees. We didn’t want to have such a hard day for the first day so we started in Roncesvalles.
We have now talked to several people who started in St Jean and every one said it was just terrible, rain and snow and steep and discouraging. No one liked it.
The first person who said that was Glenn from Vancouver. He was still thinking of quitting because it was so bad. We heard just today that he is still on the Camino though. We talked to a woman from Australia today who came with a friend and started in St Jean. They had been training for a year. After that terrible first day her friend decided to quit and fly home and couldn’t be talked out of it. Very sad.
The Australian woman was part of a tour that booked all the rooms and transferred the luggage so she only had to carry a small day pack. We hear that that is common when hiking in England but she is the first one we have met on the Camino.
There are actually two routes from St Jean to Roncesvalles, the high route and the low route. For those of you who saw “The Way” they showed the high route. But that was in the fall and in good weather. The high route is closed now due to a lot of snow and pilgrims are advised to take the low route. So all the bad experiences we heard about were on the low route which, I should add, is along a busy road and is not nearly as scenic as the high route.
Some pilgrims ignore the warnings and try the high route anyway. Three times we heard the story of the Brazilian pilgrim who died three weeks ago on the high route and of three other pilgrims who had to be rescued and treated for frostbite.
And, of course, Emilio Estevez fictionally died on the high route also.
On the other hand, a few days ago we talked to a young couple from St Petersburg Russia. They had taken the high route and had no problems. Yes, the snow was up to their waist, but no worries. They said you just needed the right equipment and needed to know your own limitations. I guess people from St Petersburg know a lot about snow.
