Tag Archives: Walking

Arrival to St Jean (or is it St-Jean?*)

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Tuesday 15 August 2023 – Farewell, then, to Biarritz, after a very pleasant few days.

The WalkTheCamino team swore that there would be someone to transfer us to St Jean Pied de Port at 11am and so we packed and generally made ourselves ready to leave.  As we were checking out of the hotel a person came in looking for people with a mysteriously foreign-sounding name.  A bit of back-and-forth (very grateful for Jane’s prowess in French at this point) resolved this into agreement that it was us that (it turns out) she should have been looking for (she was mis-reading her script) and so this total stranger walked off with our suitcases whilst the lady managing the hotel at the time struggled to get her machine to agree that our credit was good. But she managed it in the end and we followed our driver to her large Fiat MPV and she set off with us with a great sense of purpose. Thus the drive to St Jean took less than an hour.

On the way over, the surrounding countryside started to remind us what it was that we were letting ourselves in for.

Our arrival at St-Jean-Pied-de-Port (henceforth, for brevity, SJPdP) was similar to ours in Biarritz some days before, in that the transport couldn’t get outside the hotel and so we had to lug our suitcases up cobbled streets to reach the hotel – and, it transpired later, up the stairs to our room. In most other respects, St Jean was rather different from Biarritz. This was the start of our luggage-lugging walk to the hotel.

Our hotel here is the Ramuntxo, and, like Le Petit Hôtel in Biarritz, has a two-star rating. The immediate practical upshot of this was apparent by the absence of anyone to greet us and check us in. There were various helpful notices, among which was one telling the reader that check-in time was 2pm.  It was midday at this point.  Jane managed to coax a lady from her lunch to tell us, in a friendly and polite but firm way, that we should come back after 1400 and that, bien sûr, we could leave our bags unattended in her foyer.

So. We had a couple of hours to fill.  So we went for a walk. Perforce. Obviously.

We started off approaching the Camino’s Welcome Office with a view to taking a look inside to see what it offered. But our timing was off – they basically shut the door as Jane approached because it was their lunch time and they, too, weren’t going to re-open until 2pm.

We carried on wandering the town. This was a pleasure, as despite the very steep hills in the old part of the town

it’s a pretty place, with clearly a huge amount of history to accompany the very traditional architecture everywhere.

SJPdP is a fortified town, with nearly-intact walls and a large citadel overlooking the area. We walked to the northern end of the town, to the St. James gate, which is where those peregrinos who are doing more than just the Camino Francès arrive. This left us near the Citadel, so we went to look around it.

It offers some spectacular views over the town and the countryside.

After a quick look around, we were feeling the need for some refreshment, so we headed down through the town.

Cunning spotting of a niche for a business, eh?

with a plan to investigate the start point for our Camino.  There was some extremely popular entertainment going on just by the gate which marks the start (see later video) so, since we couldn’t get through the throng, we diverted out into the newer part of town where we found a place that would serve us drinks.

Today, Assumption Day, is clearly an excuse for the locals to have a good, festivally, kind of celebration.  As we sat with our drinks, a marching band came past and a trio of musicians playing traditional dulzainas (like Breton bombards only different) and drums struck up across the road.  This is a brief video summary of the three entertainments.

Combined, they gave the place an agreeably festive air.

We made our drinks last until well after 1400 and went back to the hotel to check in. At first blush it looks to be decent enough; the room is small but spotless and there’s a great deal more room in the bathroom than we had in Biarritz, and there’s a fan – ! – so I’m sanguine that we’ll have a reasonably comfortable time of it.

We were peckish by the time we’d checked in, so we wandered back down through the town looking for somewhere that would serve us lunch. In most cases, the answer was “non”; lunch is served until 2pm and then nothing until dinner at 7pm.  This doesn’t really fit with our normal eating strategy, which involves having a late breakfast and then a very late lunch as our two meals every day.  For a start, we’re going to have to start early on our walks in order to escape the worst of the day’s heat, which implies an early breakfast. There’s no way we’ll last until 7pm every day, so we’ll have to hope that ways to keep ourselves fed but not overfed evolve over the coming weeks.

As it happens, we were lucky in that the restaurant where the Basque trio had been basquing busking was prepared to serve us lunch even though it was by this stage 3pm.  So we had an agreeable meal and a couple of drinks there.  We think the place is called Anxo, but it bears no obviously visible name, despite being a very prominent establishment in the square.

The lunch (and the drinks we’d had earlier) gave me an opportunity to collect a number of candid photos of some of the locals.  There were some very, very Gallic faces to capture.

After eating, we felt that such a pleasant meal should be Walked Off.  So we ended up doing the signposted circular walk, which actually means walking round the still-intact walls of the old town.  This is a very impressive walk, not least in the number of steps one has to walk up and down.  Garmin tells me that we ascended 59 metres, which doesn’t sound much, but it’s just about 200 feet, which is 18 storeys according to a quick, non-scientific lookup on the web. So our 1.3 mile journey counted as a good constitutional – and gave us some lovely views of the walls and the town.

See what I mean about the steps?

The other thing we did with our free time was to check out some key locations – the Camino’s Welcome Office (now open), the start point of the walk tomorrow and some idea of what the going was going to be like.

The start point is at the Notre Dame Gate, and one heads south over the river.

You can see that the route trends uphill fairly soon after the start.

After a while, you reach a decision point at which the choice is between the “low” road or the Route Napoleon, which goes higher and is thus tougher, but gives better views.

Left is the high route. The blue sign tells if it’s open or not

You can see the Shell and the banded rectangle which act as waymarks for the Camino

The Route Napoleon goes up from there.

It’s not particularly surprising that it goes up, as there is the not insignificant issue of the Pyrenees mountains to cross, and one might as well start sooner rather than later.

There are a couple of helpful, if ominous, signs.

Our destination tomorrow will be Roncesvalles in Spain, which we are told is 26 kilometres away. There are only two refreshment points between SJPdP and Roncesvalles:  an auberge at Orisson, which is 8km away; and a food truck (which we hope will be there) at 15km.  That first 8km is likely to be tough:

The refreshment stop at Orisson is going to be a welcome sight, I think. It is, however, only part of the story,  The total course for the day looks like this.

(The Orisson refreshment stop is at the 5-mile mark and the food truck at 9 miles.)

For some reason, Day 1 of these walks always seems to be a bastard. It was like that when we did the Cami de Cavalls in Menorca, and, much longer ago, it was like that when we did a walking holiday in Corsica. Perhaps the Great Organiser In The Sky wants us to suffer before we’re allowed to relax a bit?

I wonder what state we’ll be in by the time we get to Roncesvalles? Come back and find out, eh? My plan is not to document every single day of hiking – that would likely be dull and repetitive – but to hit the highlights. Or, in the case of Day 1, possibly the lowlights.

See you tomorrow, when I might be reporting from hospital.

 

* There appears to be no consensus

Peregrination

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Monday 24 July 2023 – The excitement in the Burridge-Walker household is verging on the palpable as we head towards our next adventure.  The tension about the adventure itself is considerable (read on for details), but is as nothing compared with that of an update to this website.  Let me deal with that first.

I like, of course, to let people know when I publish a new post to this blog.  Several readers currently get a notification, to mobile device or web browser, to let them know when another post has gone up.  However, the method I have used thus far (called PushEngage) seems not to be a very robust way of ensuring everyone is informed; several people have reported that they no longer receive notifications.

This is tragic, and not to be tolerated.

Therefore, I have updated the machinations of the website so that it is now possible to subscribe with an e-mail address which will receive a notification of every new post. I’d thus ask everyone who is still receiving notifications (or, well, anybody, actually) to activate this new subscription method, to give me greater confidence that people do indeed get wind of new material on the blog.

Please, therefore, provide some kind of an anodyne comment and an e-mail address, and tick the “Notify me of new posts” box at the foot of this post to activate your subscription.  I will shortly remove the old push method to save duplication.

And now – the adventure!

When Jane and I arrive somewhere on our holidays travels, among the first things we do is to go for a walk. Obviously.  Many times I have referred to this as a “peregrination”, without, really, a second thought as to what the word really means. This year, however, we are challenging ourselves with a proper peregrination.

Based on our enjoyment of the experience of walking around the outside of Menorca, we (i.e. Jane) sought out other walks.  One of the obvious candidates was the Camino de Santiago, something that has been achieved, in whole or in part, by friends of ours in recent years, thus providing no small measure of inspiration.  We had originally planned to do this last year, but various pandemic-related issues put it back to 2023.

So it (we hope) will be that on August 16 2023 we take our first steps along the Camino Francés, a 480-mile (770km) journey, starting in France and ending, if we make it, at the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.  Being not entirely masochistic, we are getting our bags transferred for us whilst “all” we have to do is to walk; this, and our accommodation and itinerary, have been organised for us by a company called, imaginatively, “Walk the Camino”. They have provided masses of helpful material, among which is a detailed book about the Camino itself, historically a pilgrimage trail to the Cathedral, which houses the tomb of the apostle St. James.

The Spanish for “pilgrim”? Peregrino. In Jane’s case, Peregrina, I suppose.

Hence “peregrination”. Obviously.

To be clear, we’re not undertaking this for any particular religious or spiritual reasons, but simply to challenge ourselves. Spirituality will come in the form of a large gin and tonic at the end of each day. As ever we’re living dangerously when it is safe to do so, as the Camino is a very popular endeavour, with many people undertaking it and a well-established support framework along the way. And a few bars, restaurants and coffee stops. Obviously. (Wouldn’t do it, otherwise – do you think I’m mad?)

Many peregrinos undertake the Camino on a day-to-day basis, walking as far as they can be arsed feel comfortable before seeking accommodation, often in a hostel.  Our plan is more structured, and we’ll be staying in pre-booked and decent quality hotels, since I’m way beyond the age where sharing a room with many other people or having to get dressed to visit the loo during the night count as acceptable conditions. We’ll have the occasional rest day, too. I expect that it will be on those rest days that I bring this blog up to date; I can’t imagine that three dozen entries all saying “got up – had breakfast – walked – got a drink – ate supper – went to bed” would make interesting reading, so I’ll aim to focus just on the highlights, and use the rather natty Relive app to record and share scenes along the way.

That said, there will be some days worth describing individually, such as day 1, which basically involves crossing the Pyrenees and which I expect will give me a great deal to complain write about. We’ll also spend a couple of days beforehand in Biarritz, which should be interesting to look round.

Photographically, I have decided that I don’t want to have to deal with the extra weight of a Big Camera – and the time overhead of processing loads of RAW images – so the Nikon will be staying at home and I’ll use my phone to record everything.

Let’s see how it all goes!

I’d be very pleased if you took the time to subscribe to the blog so that you receive the updates as we go along – provide a comment and an e-mail address below and tick the “Notify” box.

Hasta la vista!

Juneau what we did next?

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Saturday 13 August 2022 – We could afford a relatively relaxed start to the day, because Silver Muse wasn’t due to dock in Juneau until 0930. This gave us plenty of time to (a) have a leisurely breakfast and (b) fret about exactly what clothes would be the best choice for our first Adventure of the day, which was to scale the local monster, Mount Roberts. Well, as far as what they call the Tramway Station, but what we’d call the cable car station (just before the number 1 if you click that last link, i.e. about a third of the way to the top; what do you think we are, mad?).

A major consideration would be the weather – would it be cold? would it be wet? The forecast was for showers, and a temperature of about 15°C.  We both had fairly heavy duty jackets available, but we could see from the view from the boat

that it wasn’t actually raining so I decided instead to risk just a rain jacket over an extra fleece layer, with a waterproof camera bag tucked into the backpack that Jane personfully volunteered to take with her, along with a couple of small water bottles, a spare camera battery and my wallet, because she’s a sucker trouper. (Hah – Ed)

The official trail starts outside Juneau, so, to get there, we thought it would be good to walk through the town.  The ship was docked about a mile outside town, and we spurned the free shuttle bus in favour of walking into Juneau. I’m glad we did, as although the first part of the walk was along the road, it gave us a view of the ship

and we arrived in the town via a boardwalk, which was quite attractive.

(There’s little doubt about what Juneau’s main industry is…)

You can see the “tramway” departing in the photo above. We stopped by the bottom station to ask about ticket prices.  An all-day pass to go up and down the mountain in the cable car would have cost us $45 each, but the lass at the counter told us that as long as we spent $15 apiece in the restaurant at the top we could ride down for free.

We carried on through Juneau which is an attractive place, provided you don’t mind a profusion of jewellery shops.

Many of the cross streets are actually staircases

because the town is built on the side of Mount Roberts (not, counterintuitively, Mount Juneau), giving it the nickname of Alaska’s answer to San Francisco. There are quirky buildings and street art

and we particularly thought it would be worth seeing the State Capitol

which has a statue outside it of William Seward himself.

Just by the Capitol we met a Canadian couple, Cynthia and Steve, whom we’d chatted to whilst awaiting the Seward train, and we fooled around with a statue just in front of the Capitol.

This is Jane, bearback riding,

Just along from the Capitol, there’s a small but perfectly formed Russian Orthodox Church, which is really cute.

(In the competitive nature of these things, there’s a cathedral next door.)

The stream of attractive houses continued

with some lovely colours of paintwork.  We call these houses the Basin Street Blues

despite the fact that they’re actually in Basin Road, because we don’t want the truth getting in the way of a good joke.  Or even that one.

Passing a couple of other interesting sights,

we eventually reached the start of the Mount Roberts trail. It became apparent that an event was under way which involved people Running Up That Hill. We had a brief chat with a friendly-seeming marshal who told us that his brother lived in Wolverhampton and, presumably to get some sort of revenge on us for this horrible family destiny, told us that the trail was “vigorous” and the cable car station was “about 45 minutes” up it.

Bastard.

The trail was steep

and muddy in places

 

(there were marks along the way to guide us – the above is a root map)

and with some sections so steep they put in steps.

It runs through forest, which is great if you like forest, but this did mean that the trees rather relentlessly got in the way of anything like a decent view to give us an excuse to stop and photograph it in order to have a bit of a rest. It really was quite hard work for us, and presumably more so for the runners who occasionally overtook us as they headed up the mountain. And then passed us again as they came down again whilst we were still panting up.

I was very glad that I didn’t bother with the heavy jacket.  Even with fleece and rain jacket I felt distinctly overdressed, and before too long both Jane and I were in shirtsleeves – once again, very lucky with the weather.  We met a chap coming down who told us that he’d seen a bear and her cub just off the trail which made us at once excited and terrified.  We never saw the bear, which is at once a shame and a relief. We also passed a couple of girls who told us that the “sidewinder fries” at the top were excellent.

45 minutes? Hah! It was a good 90 minutes of toiling up the hill (and a climb, I might add, of 627 metres which is 2,000 feet) before we finally saw the top station before us.

There was finally a view worth looking at

and we could see our ship, too

but the main priority was to get to the bar and spend that $30,

I can report that the sidewinder fries are indeed excellent and the beer – Alaskan Koelsch – was, too.  The walk up represented the most exercise that either of us had done for some weeks, so we felt pretty pleased with ourselves, particularly since we met Cynthia and Steve again; they had ridden the cable car up so I felt we’d chalked one up for the UK. Not that we were smug about it, or anything.

I had our beer-and-fries receipt ready to show for the ride down, but no official showed the slightest interest in checking our bona fides, presumably because there were very few customers riding the cable car, so we could have saved ourselves the $30.  On the other hand, that would have meant I didn’t get the beer, and that would have been a shame.

We took the shuttle bus back to the boat, and just about made it to La Terrazza for a swift lunch.  This ended Phase I of the day, but we had still more excitement to come in the form of a whale-watching excursion. Since we had a little time to spare, I had a strategic kip by way of prep for this, and Francis brought us hot water and milk (and canapes) so we could make some decent Twinings Earl Grey tea before we headed out to the quayside again.

The excursion was billed as a “Whale Watching and Culinary Experience” with a subtext of a great photo opportunity, which is obvs why I wanted us to opt for it.  A coach ride took us to Auke Bay and we boarded a double-decker catamaran which took us out into Stephen’s Passage.  I didn’t feel a thing, your honour.

Commentary was provided by a young lass who was a marine biology student and who was clearly on top of and enthusiastic about her subject.  The skipper clearly knew roughly where to go and before too long we spotted a whale so everyone rushed to the outside deck to take photos.

This whale was called Sasha, who is sufficiently well-known to be referred to as “The Alaskan Whale”. Apparently you can see the letters A and K in her tail flukes, but I wasn’t able to verify that.  I got a couple of snaps of her, above,

and this one, showing the scar across her back from an unfortunate encounter with a ship’s propeller. We saw a couple of others as well, and if/when I get time I’ll update this post with some video.

Overall the trip, although the culinary experience was nearer being just a snack bar, was good; these were the first whales we’ve ever seen, despite having gone on whale watching trips elsewhere.

The journey back to the dock in Auke Bay took us past a decent view of the Meldenhall Glacier

and then we were back at the ship a short while before it left Juneau at 10pm.

And so ended another fairly intense day.  We have a couple of tours in the plan for tomorrow – a train ride and a bus tour of Skagway.  Since we’re likely to get rained on, being inside looks to be the best option, but you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out how the weather treated us.