Saint Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles
Good Lord. We made it over the Pyrenees. We left St. Jean at 6:22 am and used our headlamps as the sun did not rise until 7:23 am. The hike was 15.4 miles in length, had a 4,839 foot elevation gain, and then a healthy drop of around 1,000 to get to Roncesvalles, our destination for today. With breaks it took us six hours and 45 minutes. Our Camino book says the hike takes seven to nine hours, so we feel good about it. Thankfully we have no blisters or big aches and pains, but we’ll see how we feel tomorrow!
There were a lot of pilgrims on the trail. They were mostly from France, Spain, and a few from the UK. We didn’t meet anyone else from the U.S. On the way down from the summit, we came across two Spanish police officers/rangers. They simply inquired where we were headed and where we came from. They made sure we knew what to do in case of an emergency, but then continued on their way. They didn’t ask for passports or Covid vaccination status. They were quite nice and just wanted to be helpful. There’s not a lot to see in Roncesvalles, but our needs are pretty simple today: food, beer/wine, and sleep. My rudimentary Spanish barely has us squeaking by, but I got to use a world I learned on Rosetta Stone: bocadillos (sandwich). Yes, that was worth the $100 cost of that language app. Tomorrow we head to Zubiri.
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AuthorsGreg and James live in Pleasanton in Northern California and are on a pilgrimage on the Camino De Santiago in Spain. Their adventures are captured in this blog. Archives
October 2021
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