A beautiful walk into Spain!

I am so ecstatic and very relieved to write that I made it and loved it, landslides and all. I left at 6:30, and at 11, I was in Spain. For me, the much harder part was the descent to Canfranc Estación. All downhill, half as many kms, and it took me more,than two hours. I have to be really careful with my knees, stepping sideways most of the time. I go very slowly.

The walk was glorious. Cool and sunny, what could be better than that! The ascent was steady, but not so steep that it felt like climbing stairs. Just a good continuous ascent. The path goes through lots of old farmsteads, which are now abandoned, through lots of forest, and when you break out into a meadow— there are the Pyrenees right in front of you!

Until about a week ago, the recommendation was to take the first five kilometers along the road, because of landslide damage. The damage is still there, but a Camino Angel has painted green blazes on the rocks to take you through the most manageable parts. It was very slow going for me, even though someone who had gone through a week before said it was “very easy.” I’m guessing he wasn’t in his 70s. But I didn’t fall, or have any bad slips, so I was feeling good.

When I got to one of the meadows before the pass, I saw a man poking around in the grass with a stick. We said buenos días (even though I was still in France), and it turns out he lives nearby and comes to this area to hunt for setas (wild mushrooms, which I love). He explained how he finds them—it involves finding a spot with a slight ridge that allows the grass to grow high, and the setas will be hiding underneath. He told me that his nose is so well trained that he can smell them now, but it is definitely at the end of the season so he didn’t have any to show me.

At the Spanish border, I did meet another peregrino. He has been walking for weeks and says there are never more than two or three others at the albergues. So I don’t expect to find too many more.

Confession time- I had decided that if I arrived late in the day at Canfranc Estación, I would just go to one of the hotels in town. But that if I arrived early enough, I would see what the rates were at the fancy place in the old train station. My starting point in these situations is the price we paid two years ago in high summer season at a Best Western on the interstate near Aspen. Our flight to Denver had been delayed, we couldn’t make it to our vacation rental, and we were lucky to find a place to sleep. I thought the price was highway robbery, so if I come across an exceptional place in that same price range, I figure it’s a bargain. So in I went. It is a very beautiful place in the restored train station.

The food in their café (not their 1* Michelin restaurant) is fine and reasonably priced. I’ve had ice delivered to my room for my knees, I’ve wrung out my clothes in the thickest towels I’ve ever had on the Camino, so I am in pretty good shape.

The station itself has a very interesting history. It was started in the mid 1800s, with the idea of opening the border with France. France, however, was not interested. But finally in the early 1900s, a treaty was signed with France to make the tunnel and the connection happen. But then came the first world war, and then came the Spanish Civil War.

When Lee and I walked the Aragonés, more than a decade ago, the station was in total ruins. We were able to walk all around and poke into different nooks and crannies. It was kind of creepy. We learned that several years earlier, a French taxi driver, who was obsessed with this station, had found a huge cache of documents, corroborating the then rumor that this had been the way in which Germans had sent through tons and tons of gold seized from the Jews. From there, the gold made it to the marketplace, where it bought arms for the Germans, thanks to Franco’s help. And here it is today, a fancy hotel.

Here are wikiloc tracks for the day:

https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/urdos-to-…Read more