We took on the Camino trail, this is what I learnt in 2 days of hiking
I discovered I have less stamina than a medieval peasant on the Camino trail.
It was my wife's idea to walk a bit of the Camino trail from France's Basque Country into Spain over the Lower Pyrénées, not mine.
I’m an atheist, she’s the Catholic. I’d have been happy to stay in Bayonne, photographing window shutters. Her aims were, well, loftier. We began, as many who choose to walk the 730km of the “French Way” to Santiago de Compostela in Spain do, in the medieval town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. We planned to walk for six days, ending in Logrono, Spain, 158km away. We’d signed up with UTracks, the “active holiday” experts who since 2007 have been sending hikers and cyclists all over the planet armed with detailed local maps, GPS coordinates, and pre-booked 3- to 4-star accommodation. All we had to do was walk. And there’s the problem.
The stage from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles in Spain was tough. A steep ascent through farmland on narrow backroads and over cloud-filled mountain ridges, it’s one of the trail’s most demanding sections. Visibility on the ridges was so poor that when the clouds parted, we found ourselves alongside 100 or more sheep we hadn’t had the faintest idea were there. We did 39,000 steps that day, most of them “up” – 207 floors of “up”. The Empire State Building has 102. There was no “road to Damascus” moment, either. The only being we felt closer to by day’s end was our chiropractor. We crossed into Spain without realising it and stumbled into Roncesvalles and its 12th- century Church of Santa Maria.
Roncesvalles’s strategic location in the Pyrénées as a gateway to Spain has seen Romans, Celts, Goths and Moors all leave their mark. In 778, the rearguard of the all-conquering Frankish army of King Charlemagne was massacred here by a coalition of Basque tribesmen. The region simply drips with history. Hotel Roncesvalles was built in 1725 as a house for clerics. An enormous structure with vaulted ceilings, its restaurant, which we loved because it had chairs, served the perfect meal – a spectacularly simple beef and potato stew served with a local Navarra white wine, a 2022 Campo Nuevo. Pilgrims never had it so good. People chat to you on the Camino like you’re an old friend.
Sandra from the UK insisted I have the last of her Ferrero Rochers, then bought me a beer. Dave, an Irishman, explained how his entire family except him moved to Australia, then kept apologising for being the sole holdout. You assume everyone is a person of faith, but the truth is, people come for all sorts of reasons. Some see it as a physical challenge. Others are working through personal traumas. There’s no right or wrong approach, method or motivation. “It’s your Camino” was the mantra. It belongs to us all.
On that first miserable day I questioned the whole thing. Why did people in the Middle Ages do this? Was it always faith? I mean, people were miserable in the Middle Ages, right? Everyone died a peasant in their 40s, plagues were every other Tuesday, you lived with bad teeth and body odour. Sanitation? What’s that? Maybe someone suggesting a walk of hundreds of miles to the tomb of a Saint was met with “Why not? It couldn’t be worse than what I’m doing now.” On the second day we woke feeling rejuvenated, or so we thought. The trail flattened as it made its way through valleys that were once feudal lordships controlled by the kings of Navarra. No elevation gains, but another 25km and eight hours of walking. By the end of the day, our spirits were broken. Fortunately our centuries-old guesthouse that night was so perfect in every way you’d walk a day to get there. Hotel Akerreta, once an empty shell until its current owners restored it, casts a magical spell with its overhead beams and locally quarried stone walls.
In 2010, several scenes of the Camino-themed movie The Way were shot here. Actor Martin Sheen and son Emilio Estevez filmed in the surrounding hills and in the guesthouse itself, likely seduced, as we were, by its unpretentious charm and the smiles and open-heartedness of its owners. Our trail, though, was done. We were not, it turned out, like the hardier pilgrims of yore. The next morning we took a taxi to the next town, Pamplona, where they love bulls and bullfighting so much they let them run loose in the town every July for the famous Running of the Bulls. By midmorning we were laughing our heads off as I chased my wife around its famous arena, the Plaza de Toros, pushing a creaky metal bull on wheels. It was silly, but that was okay. It was “our Camino”, too.
Escape route
We flew from Singapore to Paris via Helsinki with Finnair. We went from Paris to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, via Bordeaux and Bayonne, using a Eurail Global Pass (option 10 days within two months). Utracks’ Camino-Pyrenees Saint-Jean Pied-de-Port to Logrono self-guided walk will be priced from $2233 in an early bird sale starting September 26.
The writer travelled as a guest of Finnair. Eurail and Utracks.
Originally published as We took on the Camino trail, this is what I learnt in 2 days of hiking
