What’s with all the hyphens? Dunno, that’s how they write it. I looked on Google Maps and all the multiple word place names in France are hyphenated but none of them in Spain are. Claude.ai says it is mainly tradition in the two countries.
At 10 am (Wed, April 8) we took the bus from Pamplona, through Roncesvalles, to Saint Jean. In 2013 we took this bus to Roncesvalles but the steepness and ruggedness of the terrain was a surprise this time. You can forget a lot in 13 years. And beyond Roncesvalles there is a steep down (note to self: we are walking this back up in two days. Yikes!) And the Pyrenees are serious mountains.
A shout-out to our bus driver: I don’t know how he does it every day, the road is narrow and very curvy. We have noted before that trails in Spain have few switchbacks but the Spanish and French highway engineers are intimately familiar with them.
Saint Jean is a lovely small French village similar to Spanish villages except that Wynette doesn’t know the language, which makes things harder. Our hotel guy used his phone to translate which was slow but worked.
Saint-Jean is the official beginning of the “main” Camino, the Camino Frances. (They call it that because it starts in France just across the border from Spain.)
