Awoke prepared to climb over the Pyrenees today except for Joan fighting a bad cold. Today began with breakfast at Alain's Gite. One of our top petite dejeuners yet. Yogurt and grain cereal with bread baked in his kitchen, and an apple and cheese! Ate with Jack and William who will finish walking today. We left at 7:45 and it was quite cool and foggy. Of course my "tough as nails" wife knew she would be sweating as soon as we started climbing so she didn't bother to don any cool weather clothing like most others who walk. They looked at her like she was crazy. And there are so many people walking this morning. Way different than the last month. The first 10 kilometers are very steep so it is a rough start. Last year we started in Hunto which was five kilometers into the journey. We arrived at Orrison which is at the 9 kilometer mark at about 9:15 where we took our first break and got an excellent espresso. Continued on until we got to the statue of Mary and took another break for our daily banana. As we walked we started hearing a lot of American English spoken. It's amazing that in the last month we had only encountered three Americans and in our first few hours we saw several times that amount. Walked a while more until we encountered Henri and his buddy Alex who were passing out water and offering encouragement to the pilgrims. Henri said we didn't look like Americans because we were fit (not a good statement about the state of what people think of our country). It was quite funny but we were very conflicted on what language to speak as there were still many French but we started hearing the familiar refrain "Buen Camino" instead of "Bon Chemin" (and of course all the English). We eventually passed the France/Spain border and found ourselves a bit sad. Seems we have grown quite fond of the French people and their land in the last month. Passed the shelter at the 20 kilometer mark and found a big rock to sit on and enjoy our picnic. After a long break we headed off to complete our day's journey. We felt like we kept a relatively slow pace since Joan wasn't feeling well yet we arrived in Ronceveaux at 1:45. We finished the day in six hours with numerous breaks. We had wondered if last year we were just pumped on adrenaline because it was the start of our journey. We didn't think it wasn't nearly as hard as people had said. That was part of the reason we wanted to do it again because generally, we don't like to retrace our steps. But now we have to wonder if our last four weeks of walking made us strong enough to think it wasn't that bad. Upon arriving I did what I had been wanting to do for weeks....throw off my shoes and put my feet and ankles in the cold creek that runs behind the cathedral. It was so cold but so amazingly refreshing and therapeutic.
We then found our accomodations. We eschewed staying in the big albergue since Joan is sick and were able to book a room at the Casa de Beneficiandos. Wish I could find rooms like this in the states for these prices. It's a one bedroom apartment. Nice! We were able to get an early dinner here at the hotel restaurant and it was a surprising treat. Delicious!
Casa De Los Beneficianados (Hotel Roncevalles) - Excellent!!
