St Jean Pied de Port - Roncevalles 28km

Today we arrived in St Jean pied de port which basically translates as st jean at the base of the mountain pass. its a very sweet little french town (once the sun comes out) with lots of people ready to start their journey to Santiago. Step 1 - We get our pilgrims passport along with our very first stamp which is highly exciting. The man at the pilgrims office is really helpful with maps and notes. Step 2 - Accomodation, we wander about with our rucksacks for a bit, just to show what serious walkers we are, and find ´Chez Kriss and Sevan´. We are shown the rules - plastic sheets with some very informative pictures! At 7 euros a night you really cant complain and Kriss the lady in charge is lovely. The hostel if full of about 6 cats, a dog called Charlie, some hens in the back garden and now two very hungry irish girls.
Step 3 - food, our first pilgrims menu. Interesting...

The following morning, we are up early and we start walking from St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles, 28 km.

We wake up to clouds and mist, lots of it too. Total beginners that we are, and with some advice from the office of the conditions, we decide to forgo the over the mountain route and go the slightly less steep ( though it doesnt feel like it) but longer route through Valcarlos. Getting lost somewhere in the mist probably wouldnt be the best way to start off. By the end of the day we will have walked 28km and climbed to a height of 1300m.

For the first few hours we make our way along country lanes as we cross over into Spain. We follow random little yellow arrows or a yellow shell on a blue backround (see pic above).
The really tough part begins when we start to climb higher and higher through valcarlos which is the halfway mark and on to Roncesvalles.

We find ourselves late in the day on a muddy mountain path, with extremely heavy mist approaching fast, and visability fading faster! Adventure moment number 1: With no real idea exactly where we are, nobody else in sight and no idea how far the end is, we decide to climb this, it turns out, extremely steep brambly embankment up to the road which we can hear above us. We emerge only to meet the end of the path about 5 minutes later down the road! Frustrating after being on our hands and knees pulling ourselves up by trees and having our 10kg rucksacks helping us roll backwards!


The mist is everywhere by now as two very tired girls walk down the hill to Roncesvalles.
We get a friendly welcome at the hostel in Roncesvalles, however we are also told there are no beds left so we are given some luxurious accomodation along a corridor floor right next to the toilets! All in all we survived our first day...

DeLalio SFA Sponsorship...

Well to the delight of both Isabel and Vanessa an over 3kg bright orange hoody arrived on our doorstep the week before leaving for France.. this luminescent delight came along with the kind sponsorship of the DeLalio road building company is Long Island, New York, who were offering generous sponsorship for it to take the road to Santiago with us!

DeLalio SFA are making some sort of bid to tarmac the whole 788km of the Camino..

At weighing 3 kgs we decided it needed a bit of an operation before leaving, neither of us could fit it in our tightly packed 35l rucksacks so it was going to be coming in hand, over these dreaded mountains.. A sad goodbye was said to all thermal lining....

As you can see the jumper made it to some of the highest points of the trek,
And also provided a 12th layer for Isabel who was less than impressed at our warm and luxurious sleeping arrangements!