Author: cpcrowley

We took several of these on our first Camino thinking how clever we were. The Camino Frances goes generally west and pilgrim get up early and often start before sunrise. Shadow pictures are pretty common.

Some stastistics.

Miles walked, 9.2 (7.8 on the trail itself) Total: 9.2 miles

Fitbit steps, 25104

Flights of stairs climbed, 140

Total walking time, 4.5 hours (including a coffee stop)

Elevation gain 1145 feet

Elevation lost 554 feet

Finally, on Thursday morning, we began the Camino walk! 

We are using baggage transfer. While we are walking, I’ll only carry a waist pack and Charlie will be carrying his backpack, but just for things we might need during the day’s walk.  My pack, the transfer pack, gets crammed full of all our clothes, toiletries, etc.  We leave it in the reception area of the place we are staying and when we arrive at our next place, it is there waiting for us. That’s always the plan anyway. We arrange all this via a reservation on the internet. https://www.jacotrans.es. Cost is 7€ per transfer.  (Today, a euro is worth $1.17.)

So, we woke up, dressed, packed most of our things in the transfer pack, went downstairs and left it in the reception area. Said a little prayer that it would make its way to where we planned to spend the night. Then, we made ourselves coffee and cereal in the hostal kitchen, had a nice chat with an Australian couple who were about to start their Camino.  They said they were exhausted from their long flight.  They had had to scramble to make last minute travel changes because their original flight was supposed to go through the middle east.  Their revised flight went through Singapore.

After breakfast we headed out, as always energetic and excited about starting the day.  As Charlie mentioned in a previous post, we took the lower valley route instead of the ridge route across this section of the Pyrenees.  It was a pretty walk. Everything is lush and green.  Much of it alongside a large stream/small river.  It was 99% on small country roads with virtually no traffic.

About 2/3 way through we came across a strange village that seemed to be mostly a collection of mall outlets selling high end fashion and such. But there was a good bar and we had a delicious snack (chorizo and pepper sandwich) and coffee.

As always by the last mile, we were tired, a bit hot, and ready to be there.  There was quite a bit of up and down on the walk and it was especially steep at the end.

More about the walk and Valcarlos, our place for the night, in photos below.

In mid-afternoon, I noticed my throat was starting to feel sore. Not terrible.  But I felt like I might be getting sick.  (I probably caught a little bug on the plane or in the airport!) We’d already arranged to share a taxi the next day — up to the crest of the Napoleon route to continue our hike across the mountains.  Finally after some agonizing we decided we’d better not plan on the ridge hike.  Too far from civilization to not be feeling well.  And I didn’t feel well enough to be motivated to do the very difficult and less spectacular valley hike.  So … we cancelled the shared taxi, cancelled the baggage transfer, and arranged for a taxi into Roncesvalles the next day.

I was so disappointed to miss the ridge hike.  I’ve heard much about that walk. But … you hear many stories about how hard it is, maybe it is just as well!  I did encourage Charlie to go without me but he wanted us to stay together.

Okay, fire doors are important but the red bar just begs you to push it. Do we need a graphic? I read a book on user interface design by Don Norman and he talks about “affordances”, design features that tell you how to use them by their design, like, for example, a push bar.

Saint Jean has become the standard starting place for the Camino Frances so the first day is a hard hike over the Pyrenees. There are two routes from Saint Jean to Roncesvalles, Spain. The preferred one is the Napoleon route which ascends early to the ridge line and goes along the ridge and then a steep down to Roncesvalles. It does not open until April 1 because there is usually a lot of snow. This route has, they say, wonderful views.

The winter route is through Valcarlos, basically going up the valley beside the ridge line. It goes along a road and there is almost no chance of dying in a snowstorm.

Oh, did I forget to mention that a number of pilgrims have died on the Napoleon route over the years. Usually foolish people who go even though it is closed. And many have had to be rescued at considerable cost which might be billed to the rescuees.

In 2013 we started in Roncesvalles but we heard about some pilgrims who had died on the Napoleon route. A week or so later we ran into a Russian couple from St. Petersburg who had been on the pass at the same time. No problem, they said, you just need the right equipment. I guess people from St. Petersburg know a lot about snow.

Anyway we were planning and worried about the snow so we made a reservation at Valcarlos, the lower route. When we checked in at Saint Jean our host was very concerned about this. He said the weather was beautiful and it was crazy to go the Valcarlos route. He was insistent and suggested a plan: stay in Valcarlos and then take a taxi up to the midpoint of the Napoleon route. Perfect: we avoid the steep climb to the ridge, the taxi takes us to a place 7-8 miles from Roncesvalles and we get the spectacular views. Done!

We met a woman from the Netherlands just outside of Saint Jean. She had the same story, a reservation in Valcarlos to be safe. We decided to share a taxi the next day.

We all know “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley”. They did. See the next post.

I was raised a Catholic and am familiar with the votive candle idea. As we have toured Europe we have seen dozens of the displays. But there has been a disturbing, to me, trend to electrify them. It’s not the same at all and I don’t like them.

So I was happy to see none of this nonsense at this Saint Jean church. Plus they offer supersized candles, only 2€, 1€ for the little ones.

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.)

Our flight went from Albuquerque to Dallas to Madrid to Pamplona. The flight out of Dallas took off an hour late but made up an hour due to a strong jet stream pushing us from behind so we arrived in Madrid on time. Still a tight connection but doable. Unfortunately in Madrid we mislaid a boarding pass and had to go a long way to get another one and missed our flight time. But after we thought we had missed the flight, we found out it was leaving an hour late and we made it. Whew.

Pamplona is a big city — 200,000 — but has a tiny airport, not sure why.

We got a taxi to the hotel. The driver was chatty and said there were a lot of pilgrims this year. We asked him if the people in Pamplona got tired of pilgrims and he said (paraphrasing ) “no they are good for business, even if they are not big spenders.”