April 20, 2023

I am a little later than expected out the door, but it is a respectable 6:50 am.  The streets are dark and quiet as I make my way to the Porte D’Espagne gate to leave St Jean.  Just about anyone out has a backpack on them.  I am taking the Route de Napoleon, yes that is the route the Napoleon used to cross the Pyrenees mountains to attack Spain. There is history everywhere you look.

Very quickly the road is up hill, I had done a lot of walking in Eureka to get used to long days of walking, but unfortunately Eureka does not have any hills to compare to this.  It is exhausting and I have 17 miles to walk today.  The walk starts on paved road, the views are beautiful, but the walking is difficult for me.   I am going straight, but a right at the house in the picture takes you on an easier route that is not as pretty to walk on.  It wasn’t long before I regretted not taking the right turn to Albuquerque.

After 2 hours I made it to a small farm that has the Camino for its street.  a brother and 2 sisters set up a couple of tables, one with refreshments the other with painted rocks.  I got my pack off and made my way to the refreshment table.  I got a lemonade and 2 bananas.  It was free or a donation was gladly accepted, I was more than happy to donate to the kids.  I sat on a rickety bench, drank the lemonade and had the first of the bananas.  I zipped the bottoms of my hiking pants off to help cool me off for the rest of the day.  No one was buying a painted rock from the little girl, everyone was thinking of how to lighten their packs at this point.

I pushed myself to get up and start to walk again, someone else was in need to my bench space.  It took me 2 more hours to get to Orisson, I so needed the break.  There is lodging at the one albergue at Orisson, but it was booked months ago.  I had a bowl of bean soup, Basque cake and a power aid.  Then screwed up my courage to get walking again.  I had arrived at Orisson at 11:00 am.

(I learned later on that if I had asked for a bed, they would have put me back on a bus to St Jean for the night, it would have returned the next day for me to start from Orisson in the morning.  This would have been a huge change for me later on in my walk)

After Orisson we left the paved road for more trails, but still all uphill, I have 1400 meters to climb today over 17 miles. (Later I read someone's comparision of today's walk, its like walking 300 city blocks while climbing 400 flights of stairs and then walking back down 60 flights in to Roncesvalles)

It was all beautiful but exhausting.  Every time I would get to a switchback, I would think I was at the top only to see more trail to climb.  When I got to the Virgen D’ Orisson,  I took a break, removed my shoes and laid back on the grass. I was careful not to fall asleep so that i would not loose too much time. When I got up I discovered that the grass had been wet. I was almost half way.  I continued to walk again, starting to do my own switchbacks on the path to help lessen the steep climb.  On steeper parts I would walk 50 steps then take a break.  I had an Italian woman take pity and walk with me.  She would get out ahead and stop to roll herself a cigarette to smoke while I caught up and continued on to get ahead of her.  We did this probably 6 times.  Her name was something like Julia, I never saw her again after today, but I will not forget how she motivated me to keep on.

After about 13 miles Julia and I made the summit.

I thought the hard stuff was over and that Roncesvalles was close as you can see it from the summit in the distance, upper lefthand corner of the picture.  It was an illusion, as the monastery is huge, which made it look closer than it actually was.  To add to that, the path down was steep and it was now 5:45 pm, I had been walking almost 11 hours.  We got going on the last few miles.  It was hard on the knees and we walked into Roncesvalles at 7:50 pm.  I was a hot mess to say the least.  I then found out that Julia did not have a reservation, but she planned to go the pilgrim’s mass at the monastery before trying to get a bed in the huge albergue, that once was a monastery.  I can only hope that she found one after walking with me at a slower pace than she was capable of.  The sun was going down, it was not lost on me that 15 minutes later and I would have been walking down the mountain in the dark.  I did not do a good job of planning this day and will have to do better.

I got to my reservation with 10 minutes to spare, at 8:00 pm my reservation would have been given to someone else.  I made a dinner reservation for 9:00, went to my room, washed my clothes in the sink, took a shower and a short nap.  I barely woke up to get downstairs for my dinner.

I was very hungry and couldn’t get enough water to quench my thirst.  The shoes in the picture were close to new at the beginning of the day.

I went back to my room to decide what I could leave behind to lighten my pack and went to sleep.  Today I had walked 39,574 steps which was 17.21 miles.  I added a couple of extra miles from my zigzagging on the path to lessen the grade.  It was almost 13 hours.

Tomorrow I start again.