Wind down day in St Jean Pied de Port

Today was a bit weird. We have finished…we could sleep in (that doesn’t happen - we are in a rut of waking around 6.30), but we didn’t have to do anything! I had always had a dream of walking up the route Napoleon which is the way the camino leads to Spain over the mountains which we didn’t do in 2013 - when we went the less arduous route round the mountain. We had had a little look at it in 2013 just to see what it was like up there.

Amr persuaded me that we should just go up as far as we wanted, and then come down again, not dream of going the whole distance (25kms or more), and I did agree to that…so we set off at about 9.30, without sticks, with Amr gallantly carrying my smaller backpack with food and water…it was weird walking free! We easily followed the route, well marked, but it did just go up and up relentlessly! I don’t think we can have gone very far in 2013, because we would have remembered the climb! And I do remember that we loved seeing the mountains up there which were totally new to us, but this now is the view that we have been seeing for the last few,days - beautiful mountainous countryside.

So we ventured up, and went about 6 kms on the climb and then decided to say enough, had our lunch looking at the beauty for the last time, and thankfully walked back down. Even walking that 12 kms, plus the rest of the walking round was pretty taxing, and I think we finally feel that it is over, and we can stop walking, and be happy and satisfied.

Now we are thinking about life after the camino. Amr has booked tickets for 2 concerts in London. We bought our ticket for the train down to Bayonne tomorrow morning. Part of our transition is having R and R in Bayonne for 6 days. It is apparently a lovely town and we have only ever seen the train station before or after a walk. It is still in the Basque Country, which we love, and is near Biarritz, and St Jean de Luz on the Atlantic coast which will be lovely day trips, but we want to just stay in one place - not move bags! Then we go to Paris for a week and meet Omnia there, then go with her back to Liverpool.

I’ll be writing every day while we are in France to remember our doings, but maybe not every single day when we get to Liverpool and totally unwind. But after a week there we go to London, and will go to Bristol to see the cousins there, and meet up with more friends, so still plenty of excitement for us.Read more