Now in Spain! First day completed

What a luxury! It is 2pm and we have finished our walk (only 12 kms) and are settled in our very charming accommodation in Valcarlos (Luzaide in Basque), had our lunch, and a coffee/hot chocolate (which is now my favourite ColaCao!) and we can relax for the afternoon writing the blog, sharing photos, reading till dinner…perfect, as it has now started to rain lightly and is rather miserable outside.

But we had an absolutely beautiful walk. I hardly remember it from 10 years ago, but it was picture postcard countryside, some reasonably long ups and downs but just fine, and a perfect temperature for walking - I think it was about 10° when we left, and mostly cloudy even with small patches of blue…the rain didn’t start till after our arrival here in Valcarlos.

We weren’t at all sure that we would be able to check in so early (about 12) but the friendly lady was happy, but we had terrible problems communicating as she had no English, and our Spanish was not up to understanding hers! Then we discovered we could all communicate in French and all was well (she speaks Spanish, French and Basque) . We have dinner at the one eatery of the village (adjoining the supermarket!) where they have a dinner, including wine and bread, for €17. It is obviously THE meeting place for the town, as when we had a coffee there, it was packed with people sitting down having lunch (on a Wednesday)…quite chaotic! And we have vouchers for breakfast there…so all sorted. At the moment we are sitting in a very comfy sitting room adjoining our room and another room. This is a separate annex to the main building and beautifully fitted out…so far no one else here. Our bags were waiting for us, so the system works.

Tomorrow we have another 12 kms to Roncesvalles, but quite a long altitude gain, and it will be raining and could be a little snowy higher up, but not impossible, and from there is it downhill on the other side to Zubiri and Pamplona!Read more