I first planned to do the Camino Frances in 2018. I had the choice of three means of travelling out to St Jean:-

Fly: London (Stansted) to Biarritz, taxi to Bayonne, then train to St Jean

Rail: Portsmouth/London/Paris/Bayonne/St Jean

Ferry: Portsmouth to Santander, bus to Pamplona, bus to St Jean

But during 2018 there were a series of strikes on the French SNCF rail system and there were also problems with the budget airline (Ryanair and Easyjet) cabin crews so I took the Ferry option as being the least problematical. The service is operated by the French company Brittany Ferries. Subsequently I decided to do the Camino in 2019 and Brittany Ferries allowed me to amend my booking.

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The very nice thing about the ferry option is that it is less than 2 miles to the Continental Ferry Port, from where I live.

Portsmouth to Plymouth September 16

About four months before departure date I received an e-mail from Brittany Ferries informing me that ‘due to technical difficulties’ the date of sailing was still to be Tuesday September 17 but the port of embarkation had changed to Plymouth, which is approximately 190 miles south west of Portsmouth. No worries! The benefit of being retired is that a change of travel plan can be readily accommodated, if notice is given well in advance.

The first act in the five day journey to St Jean Pied de Port began when my wife took me down to the passenger ferry that shuttles back and forth across Portsmouth harbour between Gosport (where I now live) and Portsmouth, where the area’s mainline bus/coach station is located. A beautiful sunny morning was warmly welcomed as a good omen for things to come… I arranged to travel to Plymouth by bus from Portsmouth(courtesy of our National Express network) the bizarre fact being that you have to travel 70 miles to London’s main Victoria coach station, in a direction directly contrary to the one that takes you directly to Santiago de Compostela, and then change there for the bus/coach to Plymouth, which brings you back close to Portsmouth in the course of its journey. Not to worry, it was all part of the fun, and I’m not the one that had to drive through London, thankfully.

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I arrived in Plymouth at about 18:00. It’s at least 15 years since I was last in this place. So to the little overnight hotel. Then at 19:30 it was a walk to the recommended seafood restaurant down by the harbour…..

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Yes, very nice. Burp! I felt better after that little lot and so went back to the hotel and had a fairly early (for me) bedtime. Stage 1 of the journey to St Jean was over.

A day in Plymouth September 17

I awoke to beautiful weather that morning and it was just the same in the afternoon. I had been praying for a day like this because the ferry departs at 18:30 so there’s quite a lot of time to be somehow occupied and plenty of time to have got nice and wet if the weather had not been so kind.. Plymouth is the largest city in that region of England and so it is fairly well equipped with a variety of shopping and catering facilities. For several hundred years it has also served as a base for the Royal Navy, particularly its fleet of submarines, as it is geographically closer to the major Atlantic shipping lanes than is the Navy’s historic base in Portsmouth. It is also famous for two historic events both of which were later to have profound effects on both British and World History:-

(1) Firstly it was the city from where in 1588 Sir Francis Drake spotted the first ships of the Spanish Armada. This fearless sea-captain became famous for his daring tactics. He used the relatively few but more agile English ships very effectively against a much more numerous Spanish fleet. This fighting rearguard action kept them away from all of the ports on England’s south coast. The Spanish fleet’s commanders had much less stomach for a fight than Drake. So they decided to return to Spain by sailing northwards around the coast of the British Isles and then southward past Ireland….and lost more ships than they had fighting Drake.

As a result Protestantism survived in England and Spain’s declining influence in European history continued.

(2) Plymouth was the port from where the Mayflower set sail on the 16th of September!!! 1620, with 102 passengers and 30 crew, collectively known as the Pilgrim Fathers. 66 days later they arrived off Cape Cod, Massachussets. For those interested here’s a link to the comprehensive story of how the voyage came about, the voyage itself, what happened when the pilgrims arrived in Massachussets, and the origin of the tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving, held in the US on the fourth Thursday in November.

It seems that I had something in common with the Mayflower’s passengers. We were linked by being in Plymouth on September 16. We could all call ourselves pilgrims, as each of us was to set off on our own individual journeys into the unknown. You see what I mean about coincidences in my life! 399 years ago to the day (September 16) I could have been passenger number 103 on the Mayflower.

On a more mundane level I split my time between sunbathing on Plymouth’s famous ‘Hoe’ that overlooks the entrance to the harbour and visits into the city centre to eat and drink. It also had been a good opportunity to communicate to a couple of my cousins on our fledgling WhatsApp group imaginatively entitled ‘Camino Group’. The average reader of this post could never possibly imagine the utter lack of knowledge and depth of ignorance that I had with these things at that time. Knowledge of differential calculus, nuclear physics and Early Modern European history haven’t really helped my familiarisation with social media I’m afraid. But I have always been ready to learn.

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It was also the last opportunity to purchase from the Drake (yes he is quite popular in Plymouth) Circus Shopping Mall one of the recommended items to keep myself reasonably clean and fragrant whilst on the Camino – the Lush soap bar- the ‘Karma’ fragrance. The name just appealed. Purchase of a very light plastic soap tray from Boots the chemist finished things off nicely. All below 250g.!!!

Hmmm…the smell of this thing will forever remind me of my first Camino. My 250g lasted just over three weeks. Another blog post clearly spells out how fastidious I was about the weight of what I would be carrying. With this final addition my fully packed rucksack/backpack/mochila would weigh 7.2kg (15.8lbs)….so just under 10% of my body weight at that time. Yayyy!!! Then it was time to return to the harbour to await the arrival of the ‘Pont Aven’ the ferry that would carry me to Spain!!! It did come into view at 15:30 pretty well the time I’d expected it to. It gives the crew approximately two and a half hours to prepare for the next sailing.

Plymouth to Santander September 17/18

I walked the short distance to the Ferry Port and checked in very easily and without any of the fuss you would get at an airport. Boarding began just before 18:00. Yayyy!!!

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There was the initial scenario of collective confusion that greeted my arrival into the vessel….due to the inability of some passengers to comprehend the numerous diagrams that illustrate the layout of how the 650 cabins are distributed across the length of the vessel and various decks. The French crew were doing their best to direct everyone. Perhaps the Reception Area wasn’t the best place for them to have set up a sort of ‘Welcome On Board’ event in which every passenger was invited to a glass of wine with other goodies such as cheese and biscuits, assuming that you had any hands free with which to partake of this well intentioned gesture of hosptality. Oh Well, it was all good natured fun. ‘C’est la vie!’ as they say in France. I quickly figured out that my cabin was not ready at first and so it was up to Deck 7 to make early use of the Le Café’ du Festival Dining’ area, which is just one of several catering options .

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The ambience was wonderfully Bohemian. Within minutes of my arrival in the Café another passenger turned up at a table across the way, armed with bottle of unlabelled!red wine, glass, and corkscrew. Brilliant stuff. Once the cabin was ready I went off to find it, with rucksack/backpack/mochila in hand. From henceforward I will refer to it as ‘La Mochila’. We were all going to be in Spain fairly soon, so why not? Anyway I quite like the word, I think it’s quite cute! It’s an Exos 38 mochila, by the way, almost full to the brim….almost but not quite!

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The ‘interior’ cabins can be described as functional rather than luxurious. This maybe a deliberate policy by the Ferry company to ensure that passengers spend most of their time frequenting the bars, restaurants and cafes on the upper decks. But at least with a cabin you have a secure space in which to leave your valuables.

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But first, as cleanliness is next to godliness, there was the small but vital chore of washing to perform. There is one downside to a five-day journey to St Jean with only two changes of clothing packed away in the mochila. In order to remain reasonably clean and fresh smelling at least one and preferably several attempts to wash and dry what you’ve been wearing have to be undertaken whenever the opportunity permits.

I initially spent an hour sorting out whatever there was, then made plans to go to the large communal restaurant as opposed to the really expensive one that they also have. One thing I never quite figured out was some sort of radio entertainment thing located near to where you would naturally rest your head in the ‘bed’. It had two push buttons and a rotary tuning dial from which I managed to conjure up just two sort of music channels….with no commentaries or anything like that…curious! …. but not my cup of tea anyway. No YouTube either, during the voyage, unless you paid a huge premium for the privilege of on board WiFi. So at about 22:00 I was at the large communal restaurant enjoying a basic but welcoming evening meal in the company of hundreds of others. Though there were many other activities laid on for those that wanted entertainment, for me this was an ideal opportunity to switch off, relax and chill out and hope the sea wasn’t going to be too rough, as the journey time is 25 hours!!!It became clear that the thing to do for most people was to stay as long as possible in the restaurant or bar area, descending back down to the cabins only if absolutely necessary. And so Tuesday September 17 morphed seamlessly into Wednesday September 18. Things did generally quieten right down by 01:00 at which time I believe the crew were sending the message ‘It’s now time for everyone to return to the cabin and get some sleep’, so that’s what I did. It was a broken sort of sleep punctuated by the sound of the distant muffled hum of the ship’s engines. Rise and shine time was 08:30. A new day! We were still well out at sea and not due to arrive at Santander until 17:30. So more eating and drinking etc., etc.

Then finally….to the south…..a glimpse of the Picos de Europa mountain group that dominate the region of Cantabria. Fifteen minutes later Santander came unmistakenly into view and the Ferry pulled into the harbour almost exactly on time:-17:45 (local time). I could see the Hotel Bahia into which I had booked my overnight stay just a few hundred yards (metres?) away outside of the Ferry Port security fence. The crossing had been very kind to us all, nothing more than a very gentle swell all of the way. Thank you Mother Nature. Within ten minutes of the ship docking I had disembarked and was officially in Spain and the Hotel beckoned just across the road. It was all much more convenient than I’d imagined. There was a straightforward hotel check in (my first interaction with the language yayy!) and it was up to the room…on floor 8 if I remember correctly.

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So Yeah….I was very very pleased with the room. It promised to be a MUCH more comfortable night than the one that had gone before on the Ferry. But the greatest relief of all was seeing that the ‘phone had burst back into life with a list of WhatsApp messages received from, at that time, my tiny Contacts list. So communication was after all possible!!! Phew! Huge relief! Kind hearted folk had tried to reassure me that it would all be ok but I’m a bit of a Doubting Thomas until I see the evidence for myself. I was one of the most social media averse and utterly unsavvy people on the planet until recently. (Just ask anyone that knew me back then!) Walking the Camino sort of made me have to get my ass into gear and sort WhatsApp out whether I liked it or not. After an excellent shower and doing the washing I got myself ready to honour my 20:00 reservation at La Bodega del Riojano. 20:00 is really really early for a ‘true’ Spaniard to be thinking about an evening meal let alone eating one. But I’m sure they are tolerant of what they must consider the strange habits of us ‘extranjeros’. Finding the place wasn’t the easiest thing in the World. Mainly because many of these fine restaurants are located at the rear of the premises that you enter directly from the street. In most cases you enter into an ordinary unpretentious bar that might serve pintxos on a good day but it is often much busier than the restaurant. So you often walk past the place you’re searching for because you were probably expecting to find a restaurant fronting ostentatiously on to the street, instead of which it is tucked away at the rear of what often looks to be the most unlikely looking entrance. I hope that’s not too garbled an explanation. Such was the case with this ‘Bodega’. Not to worry, in Spain being 10 minutes late is of no consequence whatsoever.

I do forget what I ordered but just as well I took some photos. By the way my first serious attempts at ‘parleying’ with the natives seemed to be fairly successful as what I thought I was ordering actually DID turn up on the table. However I probably could have got away without it because those people you see in the picture above were from the USA and they seemed to be getting by using English!

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Miracle or just another coincidence?

Now is the time to mention that something very strange had been occurring here in this restaurant. You see prior to coming out to Spain I had suffered with a nasal condition which, far from being life threatening, had been persistent and problematical enough to have robbed me effectively of all my sense of smell and taste for at least two years. I ought to have had it attended to before coming out to Spain but I didn’t. But here in the restaurant I could taste everything, taste the wine and I could respond to all the cooking aromas….and the tastes and smells just seemed to be very intense probably due to the fact that both of these senses had lain inactive for so long. It was a wonderful feeling, but at first I thought it may be a coincidence due to what?…the Spanish air???? the Spanish water ???? Was it going to last? I do return to this theme in the not too distant future, and I do that because for me something very profound emerges from this experience. That ‘something’ in turn set the scene very very nicely for what was to happen as I walked the Camino and very much ‘coloured’ my whole emotional and psychological state as I walked along. You see walking the Camino is not just about looking after your physical well-being. There’s as much wear and tear going on emotionally and psychologically as there is physically. Believe Me!

After the meal I returned to the Hotel to get ready for the next day…

Santander to Pamplona September 19

I awoke to another lovely sunny morning. So in good spirits I had a rather sumptuous breakfast, taking full advantage of the abundant spread of goodies that you get in hotels of this calibre…..well the food would only go to waste if no one ate it….wouldn’t it? But more importantly my sense of taste and smell had survived the night and was still active. So having done my good deed to minimise the amount of stuff the kitchen staff would need to dispose of it was time to explore a little more of the city and the waterside area to pass the time before the departure of the coach for Pamplona at 12:30.

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It’s all so convenient in Santander as the coach station is only about a quarter of a mile from the Hotel. So being very careful and well organised with paperwork and passport at the ready I drifted over to the coach station at 12:00 ish. It’s one of those underground ones so ’twas all a bit dark and dingy but in Spain shade provides coolness and freshness. The coach arrived on time but out of nowhere so did a load of other passengers. Unfortunately in Spain as in much of the rest of Europe the concept of queuing (ok-standing in line, then) in an orderly manner is totally unheard of so there was a great flurry of hurling bags and cases into the cargo hold seemingly at random and an even greater flurry to board the vehicle made worse by the fact that there are two entrance doorways on their coaches. It was as though the End of the World was soon to fall upon us. Luckily, luckily, luckily the tickets are individually numbered and I had seat No 1!!!!! Yayyy. ….. and a quite young lady just happened to have seat No 2, even more Yayyy…..the problem though with what at first appears to be an ideal setup is that as she was seated to my immediate right I had to be careful looking in that direction too often otherwise she might have thought I was looking at her. Social niceties, eh! always getting in the way. Anyway once things calmed down we got under way. In summary it was a lovely sunny afternoon and I was able to appreciate the extremely nice, impressively picturesque and quite hilly coastal road that runs along this part of Spain’s north coast. The coach stopped at several locations, the largest one by far being Bilbao. I had never realised that the formerly industrial heartland of Bilbao was situated in such a scenic location. We all had to change at San Sebastian. The coach station here was much more vibrant and lively than the one in Santander. It was only a short wait for the Pamplona coach and off we went….TaDa for my first encounter with the CAMINO!!!! The weather continued as impeccable as ever. It passed through lovely attractive hilly countryside. Then the city came into sight nestled in a sort of depression in between the foothills of the Pyrenees to the north east and the unmistakable profile of the Alto del Perdon to the south west. I’ve never seen it in ‘real life’ but it is so easily recognisable from the numerous video logs and books that describe the Camino. We arrived at the coach station on time, in my opinion the nicest of the three that I’d been in so far. Next task was to find the Hotel Yoldi, and thanks to Google Maps and my new ‘phone this was much easier than it would have been unaided.

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The hotel was ok, the room was comfortable and quite spacious. But…the shower wasn’t functioning properly, annoyingly. The little button that sends the water up through the shower head wasn’t doing what it was designed to do, so I had to improvise a crouching posture with left hand holding this button in the correct position whilst holding the showerhead with the right hand. With a third hand I could have used the shower gel provided. Good fun! Afterwards I washed the day’s clothes.

Then it was time for a very quick tour of Pamplona’s (for me) crowning glory….the Plaza de Toros and the street down which the bulls run their course during the week in July known as the ‘San Fermines’. A ‘proper meal’ had to be sacrificed in order to do this, so first stop was to a backstreet supermarket to purchase the necessary protein, fats and carbohydrates. For those expecting at least a small diatribe about Hemingway I apologise, as there isn’t going to be one! So I found my objective and found the famous street down which the bulls run. But I didn’t expect this street to be jampacked full of mainly young people with police cars well in attendance. To be fair I did find it a bit intimidating, sad to say. But whenever I watch the running of the bulls in the years to come at least I now have a better appreciation of where the things you see on the TV are located. I returned to the hotel and am for ever more indebted to Google Maps without which it may have taken me a very long time to have located it.

Pamplona to St Jean Pied de Port September 20

Another fine morning. Today I took an early breakfast because I had booked onto the 10:00 coach headed for St Jean Pied de Port.

I’d chosen this hour specifically so that I would arrive in St Jean Pied de Port at 11:30 thus giving me plenty of time to explore this little town of which I had read so much and seen so many times featured on video clips. But not before explaining to the lady at hotel reception about the fault with the shower in the room. Though I was able to convey to her the general nature of the problem, I’m afraid my knowledge of Spanish wasn’t up to knowing what the specific word for the little button that transfers water into the shower head was (not being the sort of word that you carry around in your head)…but that’s why I’d drawn a sketch diagram which seemed to do the trick…pictures speak a thousand words even in Spanish it would seem. So off to the coach station. I was surprised how fresh the air felt whilst in the shady part of the walk to the coach station….signs that autumn was arriving in these areas close to the hills. So the final and short phase of this journey out to St Jean was upon me. I’d always wondered whereabouts in this journey out to St Jean I would become aware of other peregrinos heading for the same destination. So far I had seen just 2 persons with mochilas and they had been on the Ferry several days earlier. But this situation was about to change….as it had to. At Pamplona coach station there were, apart from myself, four others all with mochilas. After boarding the bus two of the four were obviously travelling alone, but the other two were talking…in English, in fact very english English, so I asked if I could join them and that’s how I met Jenny (a lady of ‘mature’ age let’s say) who was doing most of the talking and young Dan, who thereby was doing most of the listening. It was obvious that Jenny had done the Camino several times and so she acted as the ‘font of knowledge’ for both Dan and myself to whom this was all a new experience. As much as I had done a lot of preparation (that scientific background you see!) and read the books and watched the YouTube vlogs, it was a whole different experience to be in the presence of someone as knowledgable as Jenny. I knew that the route to St Jean would involve passing through the Pyrenees at some stage and the apprehension was raised when the driver came down the coach issuing these items:-

Blue plastic bags!. Not once did the driver actually speak. In the manner of airline cabin crew going through the motions of what to do in an emergency he just used a series of hand movements and facial gestures. In other words the message was that the road was very very bendy and in case you’d just had scrambled eggs for breakfast the blue bag was there to contain the contents of this regurgitated egg and whatever else you had in your stomach if you became too travel sick. I suppose he could have always tried the tactic of driving slowly around these bends but maybe that was asking too much of the average Spanish driver. Maybe another half dozen passengers came onto the coach whilst we were waiting giving about 12 of us in total. Then we set off. It was a very pleasant journey to be fair. Wonderful scenery all around and because the road and the Camino do come together at various points of the journey we had a preview of what we ourselves would be engaged in within the next 48 hours. I didn’t get travel sick, in fact I never got close to it….nor did any of the other passengers. The road was indeed very bendy, so bendy in fact that many of them had angles so acute that even a Spanish driver had to slow down to negotiate them without fear of mutual oblivion with a vehicle coming around the same bend in the opposite direction. For us Brits Spain is a big country and this short journey to St Jean just heightened that awareness. As in all Latin-based cultures most of the population live in large, densely populated and therefore typically congested urban areas. But beyond the urbanised zone it is almost totally empty. Occasionally there would be a glimpse of peregrinos walking along in the direction of Pamplona. The coach did make a stop at Roncesvalles….wow such a famous name that I’ve read about so so many times and then off we went again for the last little stage. It was a tremendous experience to feel that I was now on the very threshold of this adventure/trek/journey as we closed in upon St Jean. The landscape that we were passing through looked so gorgeously inviting and I just just just couldn’t wait to get walking in it. Just one more afternoon to go.

St Jean Pied de Port….(Al Fín)

So as the hands of the clock pointed to a time of 11:30 am we arrived in St Jean’s coach park. Yayyyy!!!! in fact let’s have a few more Yayyys!!! Yayyy! Yayyy!! and here’s another…Yayyyy!!! because I’ve been waiting for a (VERY) long time for this moment.

The sun was still shining gloriously as it had been almost all of the time since leaving England. First port of call according to the wise owl Jenny was The Pilgrim’s Office, up the hill. Straightaway I felt as if I had stepped into a very different world, as though I’d entered a piece of it sealed off by a sort of ‘force field’ from the world from where I had embarked upon this journey. The kind of feeling you’d have if you stepped into Diagon Alley above. I was now in a world in which the very stones you walked upon oozed with the essence accumulated over a thousand years of history, of tradition, of spirituality. There was no doubting the imprint of a thousand years of pilgrimage upon the very feel and fabric of the place. Yet the Camino is freely accessible to anyone and everyone. You don’t need to have special permission to become a pilgrim upon it. You don’t need a passport or to be a member of some secret society to set foot upon it. There are no barriers placed around the route of the Camino. But there is definitely a certain ‘feel’ to everything, some sort of hidden quality. Great stuff, so many emotions and thoughts passed through my mind. Poor old (☹) thing must have been close to overload, almost literally drinking in and then processing all of this extraneous data . I remember thinking to myself all of the following…’so this is St Jean Pied de Port….the sun is shining….birds are singing….I’m very much alive and well….I’m healthily hungry and in equal measure thirsty…there are loads of restaurants in town (and I still have my sense of taste and smell)…..I’m ok for money…I have about fifty days ahead of me to set foot on this ancient and world famous route….I feel so so ready for whatever lies ahead….is all this really happening?’ Yes it certainly was.

After doing the necessaries in the Pilgrim’s Office the three of us went our separate ways as we each had our own various agendas to deal with and we all had separate overnight sleeping arrangements….in fact young Dan may have been still looking for somewhere to sleep as I don’t think he’d made a reservation anywhere. I at first did a tour of the area around the top of the hill. The main feature at the top of the hill was La Citadelle.

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The Citadelle was as good a vantage point as any for appraising what sort of terrain I would be facing tomorrow on Day 1. Trying to second guess the route of the Camino’s ‘Napoleon route’ was not so straightforward, as there were several big hills strung across the South Western horizon.

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There is a lot of mention that the first day out of St Jean and over the Pyrenees is the most strenuous day of the whole Camino, one not to be rushed at. I knew that the highest point of the crossing was 4,626ft above sea level (1410m).(I do prefer to quote height in feet above sea level. It sounds more impressive than quoting it in metres. For instance England’s highest ‘mountain’ is 3210 feet above sea level which seems much more impressive than saying it is 980 metres above sea level, which seems in comparison more like a glorified molehill). But St Jean Pied de Port itself is at almost 600ft above sea level, so the gain in altitude is just over 4000ft. In contrast Britain’s highest mountain Ben Nevis (4406ft above sea level) rises directly out of the sea so any ascent involves the whole 4406ft. So this is what I’d visualised in the months leading up to the Camino. Having ‘done’ Ben Nevis several times I know that it’s not exactly ‘easy’ but neither is it in any way ‘difficult’. Taken at a steady pace this sort of ascent should not to be a problem. Now with the benefit of being on location and looking at the type of terrain over which the Camino was to pass I could see very little to worry about. I had half expected to see something a little more ‘mountainous’. Instead all I could see were very big but very grassy and very rounded hills. Nothing to get freaked out about. All I could hope for now was good weather tomorrow to enjoy the views that I know are possible.

So next consideration….FOOD!!! On my shortlist was an establishment that sold cider in addition to food….the ‘Hurrup Eta Klik’ strange name I know, but we are in the Basque Country, even here in France. Alors! on y va ….

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The eating area was outside at the back. It was very nice out there. I had expected to find at least a few obvious looking fellow peregrinos but no….it appeared to be hosting a good number of fairly well-heeled locals or local tourists. On my left I had an elderly (older than me) couple but they had a little dog, the friendliest life form in the place to be honest. My first task was to choose something to drink… so obviously cider… but also the quantity….the menu gave 4 options…25cl/50cl/75cl/100cl. The waiter appeared. Suddenly I was on the spot, I lost grip of what a ‘cl’ was, the ‘world’ was watching and listening, so I instinctively went for something in the middle of that range, so 75 cl it was. Which when the waiter brought it out was that jug in the top picture about 80% full. Now I know how much 75cl is. Not to worry-I had all afternoon more or less. It was pretty strong cider too, the sort of thing that grabs you by the shoulders. I realised why I was sat at that particular table. It was under a tree which is usually an advantage in sunny weather, but the tree was moulting by the bucket load…bits of twig and leaves were dropping downward fairly profusely….hence the improvised covering…and because it was fairly breezy the salt pot was needed to weigh the paper down. Not sure what the watching eyes were making of this. So minding my own business I consumed the salad in a civilised manner, then came the main course, the chicken dish….unfortunately no cutlery. So now was my chance to go on the offensive and with a little help from Google Translate a quick rendition of ‘Monsieur, il n’y a pas de couverts’ to the waiter did the trick and I think I finally gained the respect of the others…who probably felt slightly shamed that anyone, let alone a Brit, had been subjected, in a French!!! restaurant, to such an obvious oversight of not having been provided with a knife and fork with which to consume the meal.

So with the inner man well and truly satisfied it was time to have a look about town….which really is clustered along one main street….which goes from top to bottom of the one principal hill, with a small river at the very bottom. A very picturesque place, quite touristy but not overtly so, the peregrino or should I say pélerin influence appeared to be winning through, and rightly so. Guess who I bumped into during all this….Dan, who had been on the coach out of Pamplona this morning, so we went in to yet another café where we also met Jenny and we sat out at the back. I just had a coffee. It’s a small world – sometimes.

La Bendición

So now it was time to check into my reserved accommodation for the evening:-La Bendición which also just happens to be number 13!!! on the main street.

La Bendición means ‘The Blessing’ in Spanish. When I was looking through the Booking.com listing this one just leapt straight out at me. There was no other choice. I thought it so very apt to stay in a place with such a wonderful name. On the day that you embarked upon such a journey that the Camino de Santiago was held out to be, you were surely going to need all the blessings you could humanly take. Subsequent to my booking I did receive an e-mail from the proprietress Alicia requesting that I didn’t check in before 15:30. No problem. So it was 16:15 when I stepped off the main street and into the entrance to No.13 and so to my encounter with Alicia in person. It was a friendly greeting as I imagine you’d sort of expect and I was ushered into the premises. Then came the key moment! (From looking around other pages on this website you may have spotted the fact that I’ve always been greatly fascinated by languages, accents and dialects etc. I’d been intrigued with St Jean. Being so close to the border but officially in France I’d wondered to what extent Spain’s proximity had on the ability of the locals to be able to comprehend at least some Spanish. But so far today the only language that I had heard being used in conversation around town had been French). Anyway ….key moment. Alicia began to ask in a very broken English what language would I prefer to converse in (I got the distinct impression from ‘the look’ that she really did not want me to say English), so she then suggested ‘Français’? and the ‘look’ on my face must have literally shouted out ‘Non’, then by this stage losing all hope she tentatively suggested ‘Español’ and YAYYYY!!!! Bingo!!!!. Jackpot!!!’ Si Señora’ etc etc. What an amazing moment. A beautiful moment. Truly Truly Truly. As I sit here writing this I can still feel that moment, in La Bendición. The first major opportunity on this journey to bring my knowledge of Spanish into play.

And so by the grace of God and Destiny and Fate we were able to communicate effectively. That elusive quality ‘Effective Communication’. So little of it in the World, so very little! and as a result so so much misunderstanding. I’m not pretending that I understood every single word she said and I’m quite sure I messed up some of my constructions particularly for us English speakers where we struggle with the correct usage of the subjunctive moods and correct usage of the past tenses and also with the use of por/para, but that is nit-picking. The important thing is that we understood each other. Alicia proceeded to make a great fuss of me, nothing was too much. She was careful to ask about breakfast arrangements and my intended departure time. She was also keen to furnish me with various things to consume along the way to which I agreed….despite it adding extra weight!!! to my fastidious attention to minimal weight of things in the mochila. It was apparent sadly that she was a single mother. Her daughter aged 12 lived with her as the sole occupants of the premises. That’s why I’d been asked not to check in before 15:30 as she collects her daughter from school. The password for the WiFi revealed that Alicia had a very Spanish surname. The one slight disappointment of being there was that I was the only peregrino staying there that evening. I had envisaged at least a couple of hours of chatting to fellow pilgrims before each of us would be heading off the next day. But no. Things happen for a reason, after all. I was given free use of the garden which had one bit of it nicely shaded from where I messaged my cousins back in good old England. I also planned a visit to the local supermarket and to yet another of the shortlisted restaurants. But I also needed to factor in a decent shower as after tonight I would be facing the albergues and things would be at best communal. I decided to go out first then shower upon return. Now an example of how social niceties can affect our behaviour:- I was sharing the premises with two ladies, and us men often have the reputation of messing things up…maybe not intentionally…but messing things up nonetheless from the point of view of the ladies who tend to have a much keener eye for detail than we do. So in order to do my bit to improve in some small way the sadly tarnished reputation that us men have for messing things up I photographed pretty much everything there was in the bathroom so that things could be put back exactly as they had been arranged BEFORE I went in there. So there, I do care. My philosophy:-Walk over the sand without leaving a trace, glide through the water without leaving a ripple, pass through life without hurting or harming anyone.

So off to the supermarket with the help of Google Maps.

Then back to the main street to check out the restaurant ‘Le Chat Perché’ which once I located it was found to be well and truly ‘fermé’! So down the hill and over the bridge to the Café Ttipia, where I bumped back into Jenny!!!for the third time in this seemingly very long day. This time seated with another Brit named Adam. So I settled down with them and consumed another load of calories. I’m sure I’d be burning them off fairly soon. Adam was a bit of a Camino veteran, and has done it many times. He asked me why I was doing the Camino. I answered ‘firstly because I’m a Gemini’ which was maybe a response he wasn’t expecting given the look on his face. Jenny bailed me out as it turned out she was a Gemini too and she liked my answer. So there! It’s not just me. Conversation did develop and he later reassured me that with my experience and walking background that I should have no problems whatsoever ‘doing’ the Camino. ‘Good to hear’ is what I thought. So returned to No 13. Took a shower, carefully replaced everything that had been in place before I went in to the bathroom and then went to bed….now just hours away from setting off on this world famous pilgrimage.