Day 7: June 4th
It’s been a week of travel, three days of walking. We flew through Reykjavik and finally got to Heathrow airport in London. Even though I am a night shift nurse, it was a special sort of mental exercise to navigate the London train system for the first time ever on almost no sleep. But, we got to our hotel finally and rested all the next day–only going to Abby Road to visit the Beatles’ most famous recording studio and album cover location, my dad’s favorite band. London was muggy, cloudy, dirty, and the people walked extremely fast and didn’t make eye contact–I’d be lying if I said I liked it. We had dinner with my dad’s old friends, who had lived in Dartmouth Massachusetts for a year, which was nice. The next day we flew from Stansted airport north of London to Biarritz, France. There was a lot of coordinating necessary to get to the hotel-I had planned for us to take the train to St Jean Pied de Port, so we figured out the municipal bus system from the airport to the train station and then to our hotel, made all the more interesting since neither of us speak French. Then, late that night I happened to revisit the French train web page and find out that the French train drivers were on strike, and our 6:18 am train was cancelled, and there likely were no more trains for 2 days. So…..we took a cab to St Jean Pied de Port. Ah well. We got to the start of the Camino, picked up our pilgrim passports, and started walking. It was a beautiful day. We got to the French village of Arengúy and enjoyed our stay in hotel Clementia, the only place to stay in the village. The hostess Evelín was incredibly gracious and served us an incredible dinner and breakfast. The next day we walked to ValCarlos–there was a very steep climb into town. Upon entering the town the trail opened up Immediately onto a bustling restaurant, with maybe two other hikers–the rest were Basque townspeople. We enjoyed eating at that restaurant and stayed in the “municipal hostel”, below the town hall. My dad and I were the only hikers staying in that place, interestingly. Today we walked into the village of Espinal, beautiful and old–we walked through an old beech forest that used to hold covens of witches in the 16th century, we read. We decided to stay in a private hostel and for the first time are around other hikers–but only about 8 are staying the night here and they have space for 24. We have met hikers from Ireland, the U.K., Sweden, Holland, France, Malaysia, and zero people from the USA. I definitely expected there to be more people around–so far this feels about like when I started the AT in 2009 northbound–a comfortable amount of people, but long periods of solitude (or just me and my dad, in this case.). I probably shouldn’t speak too soon. The Pyrenees have been glittering green, or cool mist drifting along the tops of the mountains. Everything has been incredibly calm, and my dad’s blood pressure has decreased by 40 points systolic, a fact that I wouldn’t actually believe if I wasn’t checking it myself (his doctor had me checking it to titrate one of his medications.). I really like the fuzzy sheep, the cows, and the ponies. This first week we are just working on “getting the hang of it”- the pace of the hike, the lifestyle, getting the pack adjusted for my dad. Over time we’ll build up miles. It’s hard not to be totally charmed by the Pyrenees, and Basque Country.
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