The sleepy little town of Ossa Saint Martin woke up with the church bells at 5am – nice! That really useful torch that I packed would actually have been “really useful” stumbling down the lane to breakfast in the dark! No harm done, breakfast downed, bag on the bus and away we go – Moncho at the wheel and David on the mic – more about that later.

So we hit the town of St Jean Pied De Port, got our passports, began our “stamp collection”, walked around a bit, got on the bus, off the bus, went up the wrong path, walked some more and finally ended up in Roncesvalles – albeit a bit more on the bus than originally intended.

Apart from how pretty this area is, the “smell” is awesome – farm country – cows, sheep, dogs, a kitten, hay and lucerne – no horses but there you go, my kind of place! The houses are more like I would expect to see in somewhere like Switzerland and the Pyrennes are more like a “massive” overgrown hill than the mountains at home, but that’s what we’re here for -a nice walk and a different view of the world.

We have been assigned a number so that at the end of the day everyone who is meant to be on the bus is actually on the bus. Seems my Spanish language skills are not going to progress to far since I get to stop counting at “uno” – but at least I will be able to say “one” fluently!

Lunch, mmm, what can you say about that? Nothing in Spain is done by half measures and a roll has enough bread to feed an army and the omelette I had in mine had enough eggs to have been the days collect from a whole chicken coop.

So we ended the day in Roncesvalles, with an evening mass at the church of St Mary – super beautiful little church and the crypt downstairs was amazing. Received the Pilgrim’s Blessing to send us on our way for the walk in the coming days. Back to food! Great accommodation and an excellent meal. 

Since we may well end up lost without our estemmed guide let’s introduce the man? David – for those of you who were at the other end of the table and missed the dinner conversation – is 30, born in May, a Taurus, met a girl on the Camino last week, his heart has gone back to Madrid with her, her name is Marta and he has a picture of her on his phone (ask him to show you -pretty girl!) As for Moncho – the man who makes the wheels on the bus go round and round – when my Spanish language skills progress beyond my staggering capability with the word “uno”, I’ll get back to you with an update!

Happy one foot in front of the othering! -Bein Camino!