St Jean to Roncevalles

up 6.30.

breakfast and oot by 7.

stopped at bakers for a lot of bread and crossaints!

first 8 km a real killer. IT IS all uphill. Alan sets a fast pace. Simon dawdles behind. After 8 km Simon still dawdling but ahead! Seriouly if it wasn´t cloudly and kinda chilly this would have killed us! anyway remarkably we are an hour plus ahead of our schedule. Maybe we could do this……

In fact after stopping for more food and hot chocolate we positively wiz up the hill. We reach summit aroung two hours later and stare through the clouds at the beautiful view.

Now downhill. well almost…….

Al´s knees playing up so i give him my walking stick. We make Roncevalles in a total of 7 hours!! 3 hours less than we thought.

Found nearest pub. not hard only 2 in town. Al eats and drinks. Si drinks and smokes. (smoking rule is none til days walking is finished). When walking Si eats!! We book the ´Pilgrims meal´ for 7pm. 8 euros each.

 At 4pm we get ´passport´stamped and given room (along with 100 others!) in church refuge. To be fair it aint bad and we both get bottom bunks. Place has got internet access, but no photo download facilities,  showers and you each get a pillow!

Shower, sort out stuff then go to other bar. Meet Eileen, the Irish girl we shared a cab with from Biarritz and Dora, a german girl we passed on the climb today.

Have beers. Go to first bar for food at 7.

Soup, grilled fish (with head n tail) and chips and for pudding its natural yogurt. Oh they also give you a bottle of wine for the table (4 on each). How civilised.

After food Eileen, this other woman Linda and me go to the ´Pilgrims Mass´. Al declines on religious grounds – they might convert him again.

The abbey where mass is, is a beautiful building.

Just before the head abbot (or whatever his correct title is starts) Al appears! Catholic guilt or what!

As its all in Spanish it dont mean a lot to me but I was impressed whn one of the Abbots sidekicks gave the ´Pilgrim blessing´ in ten different languages representing all those people staying at the refuge that night.

Al and I went for more beer after in 2nd bar.

9.30pm, back to refuge and into bed. Lights out at 10pm.

Despite the snoring I got a pretty good nights kip.

Day 1 of walking done. Would i be able to get out of bed the next morning?……. you´ll have to read tomorrows exciting episode!

Adois

Day 2 – the mountains

Ouch they told us we´d never do it – they should´ve been right. We climbed 1100m – like the hair and the tortoise we dove tailed well although when Dancin Al´s legs were going the Eagle turned its attention away from the sheep.

In all seriousness we were lucky. It was overcast and we climbed from 7am – noon with a 5 minute break every hour – each time we stopped the mist lifted 100m and meant that we could see where we were going for the next hour but not more.. If we´d seen the whole gig all bets were off and the lardy asses would be coming home tamed by the 1410m col de lepoeder.

No messing these hills were hard – but just as the sun burst through we started our descent – by the way – dodgy knees in Dancin Al held us up – the downhills were always questionable and the sheer descent from the 1400m to 1000m over 4km is pretty 1 in 10, with 1 in 3 in places.

We were offered the sheer descent over 3.5km or the wimps one – lardy asses decided to bank what they had!

 We got into the 120 bed dorm at 4.30pm – man o man is it stinking now and its only 9pm and we´re thinking lucky we´re knacked!

 Nowt like the mountains the views – especially with the swirling mist and low cloud – superb!

Day1 – Simon Says…

Trip no probs except customs nicked my sunblocker and whined at me for not taking toothpaste out of bag! Got camino credentials very easily and found bed for night, sharing room with ten others. There are stacks of people doing this walk. Anyway had few beers, found some suncream, alan got a lovely red hat and ate a very good meal. Having last smoke of the day, then off to kip. The mountain we have to climb tomorrow is huge!!!! That’s all for today. Manana