Post by Wynette: As mentioned earlier, because I’ve been a little “mal”, as they say in Spain, we didn’t attempt the walk to Roncesvalles, either on the glorious Napoleon route ridge walk or the Valcarlos valley walk. Instead we took a taxi.
Note: we made hotel reservations for all the days of this camino. This is something we’d never have considered doing on our earlier caminos. It robs you of so much flexibility. If we hadn’t had reservations we might have spent another day in Valcarlos to see if I felt better to walk the Napoleon route the following day. But, all our hotel reservations were calling. We made the reservations because the Camino has gotten more crowded and it is harder to get private accommodations and we feel less open to staying in a crowded albergue on bunk beds in a room with who knows how many other pilgrims. Of course, that opens one up to interesting experiences, but … we’re ok with that.
Back to the taxi ride. We passed pilgrims doing the valley walk, walking on the highway with no shoulder, the same highway our bus was on with screeching brakes the other day taking us to Saint-Jean, we were so glad we hadn’t done that walk either. It looked downright dangerous. Not to mention miles and miles of very steep uphill.
People might not die in a snowstorm on that walk but it’s hard to imagine that no one has died by impact with a car or bus or truck or bicycle.
We were impressed by our young taxi driver. He was probably about 30, but a careful driver. He’d speed up when he could see well ahead, but most of that road is blind curves, many of them hairpin, and he was very careful going around them. I was grateful for that.
After we got to Roncesvalles we walked around the town which probably took about 15 minutes. Tiny town. We poked our head into the huge albergue (biggest on the Camino). It seemed calm considering how many people were staying there. We spent a few minutes in the church. How could such a tiny town have such a spectacular church? Well, the answer is that the albergue used to be a huge monastery.
We stayed in a small but nice hotel, Casa Sabina. We found a good table in the busy hotel bar and, finally, got our blogging started. That’s where we wrote all the blog posts up till now. We are a day behind with our daily reports.
A few photos of the day:
Hi W & C! So many memories of the Monastery/Albergue in Roncesvalles- love seeing these photos. That was the beginning for Barbara & I as it is for many & I think you two as well (as you indicated), in 2013. I love seeing this.
I don’t like the stickers on the “790” sign either. It’s such a landmark photo opp for thousands around the world. Data point: There were no stickers on the sign in 2016 when Barbara & I took a photo there. So…interesting to wonder when the “sticker” idea started.
Buen Camino! H