Our guide book said that today's hike (our first on the trip) was going to be "an indoctrination by fire", and they weren't kidding. In total, we hiked 15 miles. However, the first 12 included a climb of 4,000 feet, some of it very steep. And then the final 3 miles included a drop of 1,500 feet. The day started out cloudy, but in spite of that, we were soon sweating as we made our ascent. The guide book advises people to keep up on their water intake, and again, they were spot on, as we each probably drank over 72 ounces each during the hike and we were still thirsty at the end. The picture below is looking back towards St. Jean halfway up into the Pyrenees. Notice that we are actually in the clouds. As we continued to climb, we got above the clouds and had some great views of other parts of the Pyrenees mountain range.
Then, as I mentioned, we began our descent, which was on a gravelly path, requiring us to stay very focused on the ground in front of us to avoid any falls (the town we were going to actually has a hospital that specializes in leg issues due to the number of hikers who have mishaps on this segment of El Camino). Going downhill also put some strain on our knees and our thighs. We stopped at one point to drink some water, and my legs were shaking as I was standing there. When we finally reached the bottom of the hill and the village of Roncesvalles (where we would be staying), we were overjoyed. We left St. Jean at 9:50am and arrived at Roncesvalles at 5:50pm, so it took us 8 hours to cover the 15 miles in today's hike.
The hotel we are staying in is very nice. It is a Parador, which means it was an old church that was converted into a hotel, and is owned and run by the Spanish government. I'm sure we'll sleep well tonight, given the workout we had today. However, we need to get an earlier start tomorrow, as we will be hiking over 16 miles with a 1,200 foot descent. Hopefully by tomorrow morning, our thighs will have forgiven us for what we did to them today.
Dear Pilgrims:
ReplyDeleteOh my Gosh.... sounds a-m-a-z-i-n-g....less the 4,000 ascent and 1,500 descent. Glad you made it down safely, without a visit to the local hospital. I hope you are enjoying a restful and fun night in "church"/hotel. And, I hope your knees and hips have recovered for tomorrow's adventure. Thanks for blogging. Linda: I believe your Bengals won tonight. xoxoxo lisa
Rob and Linda,
ReplyDeleteBen and I are just now catching up on the blog. This day near Biarritz - were you near any of the places that Bob Bartlett was in WWII?
Enjoying the blog.....