Camino Santiago, We have arrived at the French Spanish boarder

Bill and Janice at the French-Spanish Boarder, Camino de Santiago

It has been an amazing 4 days. We left Calgary about 1pm friday, on a flight to Paris via Toronto. Unfortunately the plane out of Toronto was two hours late, meaning we were two hours late arriving in Paris. It seemed to take forever to get our bags…. We took the subway from the airport to the train station, and managed to arrive just before our train to Biarritz was leaving A 6 hr train ride to Biarritz France. I had wanted to get a photo of the sunset over the Atlantic ocean but we were too late in the day. We walked up town to a beautiful little Bristo for dinner. Then back to our little hotel. I think we were sound asleep by 10 pm.

We had booked a cab for the next morning(Sunday), to pick us up at 7am, and as luck would have it, the cab did not show up. At 7:10 we left, hiking 2 k. to the train station, in time to exchange our email reference ticket for our real tickets, just in time for the train to St. Jean Pied de Port.

We arrived in St. Jean Pied de Port about 11:30 am, and headed to the Camino office, to register for the camino and get our credentials stamped. We had a reservation at the Orisson Refuge, and dinner was served at 6:30 pm so we grabbed a couple of bottles of water, juice and sandwiches The water turned out to be lemon aid, very good on the trail! Orrison was 8 k down the road, really I should say 8 k up the road – the elevation gain is 470 meter gain. It was 1:10 pm when we left St Jean Pied de Port, temperature on the trail mid 30″s C, all I can say is exhausting! We arrived at Orrison about 4:30 pm. We had time for a beer, get registered and have a shower before dinner. We were not the only ones that were exhausted, lights in our bunk room (6 people to a bunk room) was out shortly after 9 am.

Today we left Orrison about 7:30 am and arrived in Roncesvalles about 1:30 missing the heat. The road was steep up gaining 800 meters in about 15 k, then we headed downhill to Roncesvalles dropping 600 meters in 3.6 k. of a rocky trail, hard work, very hard work. Roncesvalles (Orrega) is a lovely little town, with a beautiful abbey. We have plenty of photos which will be posted sometime in the future……