Today we walked from Roncesvalles to Zubiri. It was about 22 kms walking and it rained the whole day. It was very cold starting out this morning with the temperature around 4ºC and very overcast. For the rest of the week in Roncesvalles snow is predicted so it was getting pretty chilly. Beanie and gloves were on although I’m yet to find a good set of gloves that are waterproof, don’t stink to high heaven after wearing and don’t feel like you’re walking around in boxing gloves. The ones I had on today were bought in Sydney and claimed to be gore-tex and waterproof and warm. Well they definitely weren’t warm and certainly not waterproof. Time to look for a new pair.
We had a very pleasant stay here. The hotel was warm and the staff were friendly. The food was also very nice. For dinner last night we had a 15€ each for 3 courses. I had a salad for entree, steak and chips for main and the dessert was vanilla ice-cream. Breakfast was a buffet for 10€ each which was enjoyable and filled me enough to do the walk for the day without stopping for lunch.
The town of Roncesvalles is really just the church, the albergue and the hotel we stayed in. We could only assume that the priests there might be part of an order as there were four of them but couldn’t be sure as we didn’t spend enough time there to find all that out.
The rain hadn’t quite started as we left town. The path above followed the road for a certain distance till we hit a town. The walk today was mostly downhill with a decent of around 500 metres to Zubiri. The walking was easy going but with the low temperature I found it hard to stay warm enough. When you’re going uphill the body sweats and warms up but going down not so much.
Not sure what it is with this part of Spain but the towns we passed through today were all very quaint, picturesque, clean and well maintained. Not sure what the go is there. Perhaps there is a bit of money in this region, maybe something to do with being close to the French border.
The majority of today’s walk was in farm and bushland with a few towns to pass through. Not much road walking at all. The rain was constant. Not torrential but constant. I was beginning to feel quite damp underneath my coat but that could’ve been a mixture of sweat and some the external damp making its way in too.
Autumn has well a truly set in and the colours today were spectacular despite the rain.
The last 3kms of the walk was steep, rocky and slippery and because of the rain the water was cascading down the path as well. We took our time so as to not trip or do any damage to ourselves. A little over the rain at this point and was looking forward to getting to the hotel and getting warm and dry.
We arrived at the hotel at around 3pm which means we averaged 4kms per hour. We’re going to use that average to calculate all our days walks to give us enough time for the longer days where we will be walking up in the high 20’s.
That’s it from me for today. Time to get dinner and a beer.
For a map of today’s walk and stats, you’ll find them here.
Buen Camino! 😊
Once again stunning photos. You have a good stance of picking fairly reasonable places to stay! A 15 euro meal and a 10 euro breakfast! Wow well done.
But you need to be a wally to appreciate these things.
Looking forward to some great photos of your new adventure.