Camino Day 1: St Jean Pied de Port to Roscenvalles (about 27kms)

30 April 2009

Got up at 6:15am, but had been awake since 2:30am. Sleeping in shared accommodation will take a little getting used to. Especially when all our passports, wallets, camera gear are there with us.

Breakfast of breadsticks and jam, with tea/coffee/Quik served in bowls.

Within minutes of leaving St Jean Pied de Port we were in th emost fantastic scenery. Serious photography pornography. Seriously!! Sun not up yet. Fog sitting in patches all around. Rolling hills & valleys.

Slow steady uphill for first 4~5 hours, then crazy incline for remaining hours. (7.5hrs hiking in total) Started with t-shirts + thermals + heaviest rain jacket, then stripped down to t-shirt by mid morning.

Unable to tell how far through we were, as the route we took (Valcarlos route) didn´t have many landmarks that matched the maps we had. Several hours of winding dirt (& mud) roads & paths, getting muddier the higher into the hills we went. We were absolutely shattered, and kept on hoping the city would be around the next corner... but the trail went on and on and one... higher and higher and higher. On of the ladies we spoke to that morning said that this first day was supposed to "separate the wheat from the chaff". That´s an understatement.

Climbed a small hill to a monument 1.5kms from town, just as heavy rainclouds rolled over the closest hill. Had a race with it to see which one of us could make it to town first. Hannah & I won... just.

The abbey (monastery?) we´re staying at tonight is a sprawling complex, with bedding for 120 pilgrims. Another refuge in town was closed for renovations so there wouldn´t have been enough accommodation for everyone... so waited 90mins for the office to open so we´d be right at the front of the queue. Lucky... as there was a hoard of wet people huddled behind us by the time it opened. Not all would have got beds and would have had to walk to the next town. Turns out the coming weekend is a public holiday in Europe (Mayday), so there are many more people on the Camino than normal.

Listening to other people, not everyone is doing the full 800kms. Some do 200 or 400kms, but an Aussie guy we spoke to on the road has walked from Paris for the last month. That´s hardcore!!

We arrived in Roscenvalles with mud up to our knees, and in absolutely SHATTERED physical condition. Couldn´t wait to take a shower... but had to wait to take one.

The abbey can take 120 people for a night. Turns out it´s one huge room with 120 beds, 2 showers, 3 toilettes, 120 muddy stinky exhausted people talking in every possible language.

Gotta run as only 2 mins left before I get cut off, but I´ll upload photos ASAP. :)

St Jean Pied de Port

29 April 2009 (776kms to go)

I can´t upload photos from here, but OH MY GOD this is a beautiful city. I´ll add them ASAP.

Slept in then reorganised backpacks. It´s one thing packing them at home where it´s all theory... it´s another thing using them during travel. With a top-loading backpack, the thing you need always seems to be at the bottom. The advantage though is that we can get absolutely drenched, and not have a single drop of water come through.

We already have a short-list of items to send back home... and we haven´t even started yet. It´s mostly power adapters that don´t quite fit the sockets here, and that sort of stuff.

Spent the say roaming around the city. Climbed loooooooong steeeeeeeeeep muuuuuuddy staircase to Citadelle Vaubon. Fantastic views over city & countryside. The clouds separated for the first time all day illuminating some of the fields. Not all though... just enough to make it even more scenic. :)

Preparing to spend first night in shared accommodation -- talking to another pilgrim about it wondering how it´ll go. It´s a room with 6 people: Hannah & myself, a South African woman, a Canadian-Aussie woman, and two Italian guys. Comparing backpack weights. I´m carrying around 14kgs (plus water), Hannah has about 12kgs plus water. The two woman have around 7kgs, and the two other guys have about 15~16kgs. There are a few guys in the room next door carrying about 20kgs. We´ll see how their knees are in a fortnight. ;)

There are two possible routes for tomorrow. There is the Route de Napoleon that climbs from 200m to 1400m then back to 1050m at the destination (that´s a Big Friggin´Hill). It´s currenly under 20cm of snow, so we´ll wait for a weather update tomorrow if we want to do this. The other way is the Valcarlos Route, which is a slow steady climb uphill... until the last few kms where it get crazily steep.

I´m 99% sure we´ll head the latter route, as we´re not keen on heading into the snow with our hiking shoes (not boots) on. I love our shoes... but they´re not show shoes.

Overnight people are quite restless, with one reading a magazine (crinkle crinkle), and the others getting up for bathroom breaks. I´m actually writing this in my diary at 3:30am (later to be typed into the interwebz) after being woken at about 2:30am.

Highlights:
* Exploring Citadelle Vaubon
* Watching in awe as Hannah converses in French organising the Pilgrim´s Passports, accommodation, directions, suggestions, chit-chat, etc. Is there nothing this woman can´t do???

Travel Day

28 April 2009

I´ve got limited time online (sitting in a monastery with 120 people wanting internet via 2 PCs), so I´ll bullet point most of this. I can´t upload photos from here (no access to USB port), so I´ll add them later. Here goes...

* Departed Brad & Rose´s 8:30am.
* Took several trains to get to airport.
* Plane to Biarritz (France), then bus to Bayonne (explored for a while).
* Train to St Jean Pied de Port (the Camino´s starting point in France near the Spanish border) with 1~2 dozen other pilgrims. Many backpacks, many walking poles. Some pilgrims left the train running to reach the refuge first, but we had already decided to stay in St Jean Pied de Port for 1~2 days first as we´ve heard it´s a beautiful city. Stayed at Central Hotel for 70€.
* Was very proud & impressed at Hannah´s French skills -- organising accommodation, etc, within minutes of arriving in town.

London

We've had a fantastic week in London staying with Brad & Rose, two of the most wonderful people in the world.

We've visited a few of the main sights (Avebury, Stonehenge, Brighton Pier, Camden Markets, etc), but mainly we've been catching up with Brad & Rose, meeting their friends, and exploring the food side of things... which is exactly how I wanted to spend the time. Rose is about 7 months preggers and she looks soooooo cute! They'll be almost due to have their bambino by the time Hannah & I finish the Camino and come back.

Today we're having an admin day, as tomorrow we travel to the Camino's starting point. It's a flight from London to Biarritz; a bus from Biarritz to Bayonne; a train from Bayonne to Saint Jean Pied De Port. (Google maps link)

From there, it's all on foot until we hit Santiago de Compostela. Here's the GoogleMaps link for the walking route.

Oh, if anyone is familiar with Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (AKA Dr Karl) from Australia, he started the Camino about a week ago too. Here's his Camino blog. From what I understand, he's walking with his wife, two children and his parents-in-law. Wow!

Anyway, gotta shoot off... lots to organise today. :-)

Departure Adventures

Before even leaving the Melbourne Airport, we had a few adventures.

After a wonderfull farewell dinner with family followed by a couple of hours sleep, Dad & Cheryl woke us up at 2:30am to take us to the airport.

We had a few things to claim back via the Tourist Return Scheme (getting the GTS back on recent equipment purchases) so we arrived at the airport at 4:00am for a 7:45am flight. We had no idea whether claiming these items would take 5mins or 90mins, so we figured the earlier we got there, the better.

Claiming the tax back took about 5 minutes, so we figures we'd have a couple of hours to kill before heading off. That was... until we hit the check-in counter and discovered it was going to cost thousands of dollars to take the luggage we'd packed!!

It turns out that the travel agent had massively underquoted the excess luggage cost; and we'd packed our luggage a lot more efficiently than we expected. So, if anyone is going from Melbourne to London, the going rate is $75 per kilo. Yikes.

Anyway, the end result was that, standing right near the check-in counter, Hannah & I had to dump half our luggage there and then. Losing the Camino hiking gear wasn't an option: we'd spent months researching and weighing every single item in the backpacks and had whittled it down to bare essentials. Losing the camera gear and laptops wasn't an option: they're as essential as oxygen. So it was most of our normal everyday clothes and toiletries that we dumped. We hit London with enough everyday clothes to last a couple of days... if we re-wore things on some of those days.

I don't know what we would have done if Dad & Cheryl weren't there to see us off... and take things back home. A huuuuuuge thank you to you both!!

I was definitely in need of a wardrobe renovation anyway, so it's a good excuse to go SHOPPING!!

(The piccy is us with the excess luggage we had to leave behind. Oops.)