so, this is me on my own now! and once again writing on a french keyboard. gitte's tendinitis in one foot and arthritis in the other made it impossible for her to continue walking even after a few more days of rest. i set off on my own from navarrenx this morning. chris and gitte headed to st jean pied de port by taxi with the idea of spending a few days there and then bussing to bilbao for a ferry back to england. turns out they could only catch a bus to bilbao today so they quickly checked out of their gite/hostel and ran/hobbled to the bus.
and so one adventure comes to a close and another begins.
i should also note that five years ago tomorrow kim, mathias, annick and i all reached santiago. kim and i had started together and mathias and annick were friends from germany and quebec we met along the way.
chris and gitte were people that kim and i kept running into last time too. thanks to their encouragement to start from le puy and their linguistic support and simply general friendship i have had an amazing 1 1/2 months in france.
on my own. yikes. i was pretty nervous realizing how much better more than one pair of eyes is when it comes to spotting the trail markers. suddenly it was all down to me!
i am happy to report that i did not get lost once. i covered 17 km in five hours and ten minutes. i was going to stop for lunch about three km before my gite but the "bridge with seats" mentioned in the guidebook that would have made a nice resting spot never appeared and suddenly i was at the turn off for the gite.
to get to maison bellevue you walk 500 meters down a lovely shaded path until you reach a big farm gate. there were two pages of instructions but they were all in french. i gathered that i should go through the gate and make sure it was closed again. i could see what could be the gite off to the left. the cows were to the right. the sign said something about droit which i think means right. putting it all together i followed the edge of the field heading left towards the house and then cutting across to the right as i got close to the house. this may have been what the two pages said to do because the house was the right place.
i am now approximately 44 km from st jean pied de port. due to the spacing of available gites i will arrive in st jean on sunday the 15th of may. if weather is good i will take the route napolean across the pyrenees to spain. if it is not good i will take the lower route.
rain was predicted for today. thankfully the mqssive thunderstorm hit around midnight last night. while it was overcast and (welcomingly) cool today there was no rain.
lunch for me consisted of bread i had brought from navarrenx and half a tin of basque style pork pate that i picked up from the producer himself. the way passes right by the business and the owner has put up a nice pilgrim shelter with picnic tables and there is some product for sale. when i approached the shelter a man came out of the warehouse and asked if i needed any water. he made change for me and i bought a couple of pork pate tins.
dinner will be interesting. the gite owners are taking some of us to a nearby restaurant.
tomorrow i head to uhart-mixe where i will stay at the gite d'etape l'escargot. (it comes highly recommended by portuguese jose - a portuguese character walking from santiago to rome - who we met a few days back in arthez-de-bearn. but that story will have to wait for another time)
and so the adventure continues!
Hi Karen,
ReplyDeleteyes, you are right it will exactely 5 years ago, that we reached Santiago. I started at the 13th of apr in Roncesvalles and reached Santiago at the 13th of may.
Congratulations, that you have the chance just to walk alone, now. You will for sure miss the company and talks wth friends, but for me it became outstanding to be just on my own... meeting people only at the evening. Anyway, good luck, enjoy food, wine, the landscape and the people.
You are in my mind. Mathias