Day two - Roncesvalles to Akerreta

 

A foot bath en route

Not an easy day today. Because we really wanted to stay at the Hotel Akeretta, immortalised in the movie The Way, we added an additional 5km to the distance most pilgrims would walk.

In general, pilgrims walk from Roncesvalles to Zubiri, just over 20km, and then walk on to Pamplona, as similar distance. Our walk today was 28km, but tomorrow we have a mere 14 or 15.

We woke up this morning champing at the bit. Although I drank too much last night in the sheer excitement of getting over the Pyrenees alive, I felt like the injury to my left hamstring was good. More about that later. We were disappointed that breakfast wasn't until 7.30am, especially when we saw that a couple of groups had managed to negotiate an earlier time. We knew we had a long day ahead and had watched pilgrims streaming out of the monastery since before 7am.

Nevertheless, we got underway by 7.55am. The early part of the track is lovely, old forest, with a recently updated gravel surface. Sadly, I found out early that my hamstring injury hadn't decided to recover and go away. Au contraire, it had recruited the inside section of left knee to bring added pain.

It became excruciating to walk uphill and eventually I had to borrow Cathie's poles. She walks with two, I only use one, but I needed that added support to thrust myself painfully uphill.

It didn't help that the surfaces varied wildly. Sometimes we were on smooth, well-maintained paths and at others, they were rough, steep, stony and generally badly behaved. While I had trouble going uphill, Cathie had problems going down. With taping on each knee, as well as elastic knee supports and two poles, she was having as much trouble going downhill as I was going uphill.

And so we blundered on, passing through Burguete, where witches were persecuted and burned in the 17th century. A small spell was cast over us, as we overshot the path and had to get ourselves back on track.

At 11km, we stopped in to a small village and had coffee and a tortilla, which revived us considerably. Cathie gave me some paracetamol and ibuprofen which, together with the rest, set me up for much improved walking speed (note - the Spanish Tortilla is an omelette made from eggs and potatoes, sometimes onions, and served with lumps of crusty bread).

Stops such as these are useful meeting places. At this one we came across a couple of southern ladies from the US (at least that's what their accents suggested to us) and also an Irish chap, who was doing his regular Camino top up. This was the twelfth time he'd walked between St Jean Pied de Port and Pamplona. Interestingly, although he'd walked many times over the Pyrenees, he'd never struck winds such as we encountered yesterday.

We came to the stream crossing where Cathie decided to cool her feet. I stepped across the stones, dislodging the gent sitting on them. When I got to the other side I had to ask a lineup of women if one would shift their posterior so I could step down. I recognised an Aussie accent, so got into a discussion about Australians. Turns out she was a Bendigo girl through and through. Bendigo is where my mother was born. I've been there many times and even went to school there for a short period back in the 1950s. My new friend lived in the area, had been to school close by and had even lived in the same street as my Auntie Joyce, who died two days ago. It's a small world.

From then on, today's journey was just one of endurance. We were both uncomfortable, with varying degrees of pain. The surface beneath our feet kept changing.

For a while we'd have lovely paved surfaces. Then it would degenerate to broken stones with diabolical ascents or descents. 

We passed through villages and forests.

Saw lovely flowers and farm scenes.

But throughout all this variety, the one thought in our minds was "When will we get there." We reminded ourselves that the discomfort was temporary, although when temporary extends to nine hours it starts to become permanent. At just under nine hours, my watch decided its battery was flat, but at that stage we only had 200m to go.

It was worth it to get to this lovely historic building, to drink cold beer, stand under a hot shower and (in Cathie's case) to soak in a hot bath.

We're looking forward to a great meal It's gone up from €19 to €25 since I was here last in 2019, but I'm sure it'll be worthwhile.

Not many photos today: https://photos.app.goo.gl/t7cKT9wVF8Cbci5Y6

Relive video to come later.

A late night addition. We had a lovely dinner. Coincidentally, I had the same menu choices as I did three years ago - salad, beef stew and mango ice cream. We ate with a Dutch couple - Jeanette and Lucas and shared a lot of experiences. At other tables were a US tour group who were very jolly. Hello at this stage to all of you. I'll pretend I can remember everyone's names, but it would be fatal to forget anyone, so I won't even try. I hope we meet up with you again.

And so to bed...

PS: For technical reasons which 

 won't explain, we don't have a Relive video for this day, but there's one from my watch (sans photos) https://maps.suunto.com/move/petergibbs/628a71c54aee6a44568ffe73