Blogs from Saint-Jean, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Europe

I slept for a few hours at a time, and had no problem getting up about 6am. We had decided to use the backpack service for our backpacks and take the small one. I'm glad we did! We dropped off the backpacks at the main office and strolled around outside until 7am when breakfast was served. It was anything special, just coffee (in a bowl!), bread, orange juice and jam for the bread. We finished our breakfast and were on our way before 7:30am. The trail started steep, and didn't change much, except to get even steeper! Just after 8:30am we reached the Virgen, so we stopped for a short break. There was no food truck, but we discovered later that apparently he parks further along the trail until just before noon, then moves to Virgen ... read more

EL CAMINO de SANTIAGO Planning My living room was a morass of camping and hiking gear almost from the moment that my daughter, Lauren, agreed to go with me on this adventure; walking the French Way - 500 miles from St. Jean Pied de Port, France to Santiago, Spain. I thought, with this early start, things would automatically divide themselves into equipment and clothing to carry in my back pack and that which we would leave behind. Preparation for hiking the Camino was also an opportunity to eliminate unnecessary items from our hiking closet. I anticipated wrapping up this part of the preparation in a week or less and then I could enjoy with anticipation, the comfortable, light weight pack beaming at me as it stood against the wall waiting for the big day, the departure ... read more

Our little wolf pack left Pamplona Sunday afternoon where it grew by one: Eileen, a longtime friend of Angie's joined us from Barcelona for the first week of our trek. We made it to St. Jean Pied Port (the "Feet of St. James": official starting point of our pilgrimage) mid afternoon on Sunday. Eager to get on the trail, we stopped into a hostel to get Eileen's passport and hit the trail. The outcome was unexpected: This hostel owner quickly sized up that we were fresh on the pilgrimage and convinced us "you're crazy to start the trail tonight!" He suggested we stay and start the next day. After a quick decision (we clearly haven't learned our lesson!) we handed over $17 Euros each which included a "pilgrims breakfast". After a sleepless night in a dank, ... read more

We arrived in Paris Sept 3,a little tired.Boarded a train for Bordeaux from the airport (thank-you to Patrick.)On the 4th we arrived in St Jean,received our passport,and booked into a hotel.Bit of a late start,but we were only going 8 kms,how bad could it be? BAD!BAD!and more BAD!In 8 kms we climbed a 1000 metres,only to find they made a mistake and only had 1 bed left,but...they did have a tent.Ï am sure we would have slept on the ground which I guess we did.There were a lot of Canadians in the group.It was very damp in the mountains so everything got wet. Sept6 The next 20 kms over the Pyrenees took us 7 hours.So as it turns out,sleeping on the ground is a picnic. The scenry was unbelievable,we walked 4 kms straight down through the ... read more

Leaving home tomorrow - all packed and ready.... read more