steep & windy pyrenes
man, that bit steeply uphill from sjpdp to honto and onto orisson takes a bit out of you!
it is steep, over just 7,5km you go up from 50m elevation to about 800m. today i walked the entire day with gordon from scotland. makes the walking enjoyable. eventually you don’t realize how tired your legs are.
in orisson there is the promised cafe au lait, plus un sandwich avec fromage de brebis. i order in my best non-existent french, success, the guy understands what i want and need.
from orisson its a further 12km to the highest point of the tour on the collado de lepoeder on about 1,450m elevation.
this part of the walk is a lot more pleasant in terms of how much less steep it is. but, man is it windy up here! now that i think back, it was similarly windy in autumn 2022 when i first walked here.
i should have attached my banners and the qr code a little better. when i put down my rucksack to get the poncho out, they are gone.
if i’m lucky a basque-french farmer or one of his cows or sheep will get in touch to retunr them. not that i need them desperately, but there goes one elemnt of my plan - nobody will read the banners, scan the qr code and try to find my daily reports and photos this way now. they also won’t ask about the what i think are the most beautiful stamps on the peninsula.
the stamps i carry (35 of them) for every etappe of the camino frances, plus two extra, were designed and produced by my sons. can you tell that i’m a little proud?
after the collado it is downhill all the way to roncesvalles.
and steep again through the forest, so grodon and i opt for the alternative that leads along a narrow road towards the puerta de ibañeta, where there is a little eremitage and a monument remembering roland. pilgrims come up here also from sjpdp via the alternative and less steep route through valcarlos. less tough on the knees.
we talk all the way. gordon is a retired policeman, before he was with the royal airforce. once stationed in berlin, speaks german also.
we swap stories about many things, also about our experiences with police. not acab!
on the way down we see glimpses of the monastery roncesvalles that hosts the albergue. i don’t think there are any monks left here. and in the distance we see burguete. this will be the spot for the morning coffee tomorrow.
arriving into the albergue in roncesvalles is very organized. it has to be, guessing by the number of pilgrims and the number of beds, equally impressive!
run by a dutch camino association, all of them volunteers, that are very helpful. many languages on offer today: dutch, english, german, french, spanish, italian, portuguese, korean, mandarin, japanese. people from all over.
there is real order here: put your backpack against this wall, your shoes onto those racks in there, then come into the kitchen area and sit down with one of the volunteers to sort out the reservation that you hopefully have, and the qr code for the pilgrims pass. that one wasn’t ripped off my rucksack by the wind luckily, it’s on my phone.
when it’s my turn at the check-in counter the lady takes my credencial, she pauses. where is this stamp from, she asks. i tell her, she immediately wants one for her own credencial once she continues the camino after her stint as a volunteer at roncesvalles. she is happy, i’m too - i won’t need the qr code for my contacts, i just need to show people the stamps and they want one, or all of them!
for dinner, there is one last bit of organization. there are only 3 restaurant options and everything works on a voucher basis. i’m lucky again and receive the last available voucher for the 7pm dinner slot. so there is a good chance for deep sleep well before the albergue closes at 10pm. let’s see with what i dream, as they say in spanish: veamos con qué soñaré.
p.s.: i didn’t get to think about the questions for the day today, neither the ones received from volker, nor the ones noted down on my ‘contemplation cards’. but that’s ok, the camino is still long. i will get to them eventually.
