From St Jean Pied-de-Port to Espinal

Day 1 – Saturday 24 August 2013

Distance to Santiago: 811 km

While on the train from Lisbon to Irun we reconsidered the starting point of our walk.  We planned to start at Irun because of the effort to get to St Jean Pied-de-Port. We decided to start the Camino de Santiago from St Jean Pied-de-Port in France, hiking the Pyrenees. We went to Hendaye, one station further than Irun to get another train to St Jean Pied-de-Port.

We arrived late afternoon in St Jean, applied for Credential del Peregrino from the pilgrim office and decided to start our walk.  Marinda succeeded to book accommodation.  We have to walking 4 km uphill to Hunto and overnight there. The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain. We followed the Route de Napoleon and we started with a steep climb, on through orchards and past country houses.

 It was uphill all the way, our backpacks were too heavy and we suffered. Such that we wanted to discreetly discard some of our luggage (was lus om dit net daar weg te bliksem). We first tried to drink most of the four litres of water and then tried to eat as most of the nuts and dried apricots. Dit wat oorgebly het het ons weggegooi. We succeed to reach our overnight albergue when we were on the point of dying of despair. That evening things such as deodorant, facial soap, tissues, some clothes, hair conditioner and more were identified and left behind. The next day we managed to walk the 25 km over the Pyrenees. As jy jouself wil martel hier is die ideale manier. This is definitely not a picnic in the park. The reward was the stunning views, absolutely awesome. On the way were farms with free ranging sheep, cattle and horses. And no fences.

While walking uphill the views were amazing. I really cannot describe it.
More than awesome.
We walked 4 km uphill for the day. (It felt like 40 km).