Gamarthe

As a team we decided that we wouldn’t leave Aire-sur-l’Adour until we had the arrangements for Bronwyn sorted out. The friendly owners of Hotel N’Atura were extremely helpful. Unfortunately, the accommodation was very basic, so there was no way we were leaving Bronwyn there. Between us and S-CAPE Travel (the French partner of UTracks), with assistance from Mary, we developed a plan. Bronwyn would be collected by taxi and taken to Dax (about an hour away), where she would catch a train to Biarritz and check into a different hotel to us to isolate (turned out to be just up the street from where we were staying). We would be able to see her in a few days. S-CAPE also organised a pharmacy supervised COVID test to provide the evidence needed to support her travel insurance claim.

With Bronwyn sorted, we headed off in the bus for our last walk of the tour which started in Gamarthe, located in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the Pays Basque. We drove for about an hour and forty five minutes towards the Pyrenees, mostly along the autoroute, stopping to pick up picnic supplies on the way. As we had started a bit late, we decided to reduce the walk from 15.5kms to 11.5kms, as we still wanted sufficient time in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to explore the city.

It was a lovely day weather wise and the Basque countryside was so lush and green and, as we were at the foot of the Pyrenees, a little steep at times. Our path went up and over what looked like a pretty steep hill, but in practice the road zig-zagged up the hill and, thankfully, we didn’t go over the highest part. The highest point of the walk was Col d’Oyhanzarre and after this it was all downhill. We passed through Lacarne, Bussunarits and passed by the Château d’Aphat. We met many pilgrims during this walk, including a Dutch couple who had been walking for about 6 weeks, a young guy who had come from Lourdes, and many others. We ran into Jerome parked by the road along the way, so we had lunch next to the bus in the shade. This was great, as we could leave our rubbish and anything else we didn’t need for the rest of the walk.

On discussion with Jerome, we decided we would meet him at St-Jean-le-Vieux and he would drive us the last 4kms into St-Jean-Pied-de-Port. The walk to this town was lovely and fairly flat, but the day was warming up, so once we met Jerome we stopped for a refreshing cold drink at a local bar.Read more