Two important lessons learned today. First: too much warm clothing is as bad as too little. Second: I think I´m actually in a little better shape than I was the last time I did this. Neither is earth shattering, but the more you know....
To the first lesson, I left St. Jean in what I thought was a reasonable getup considering the weather. Long sleeve base layer, cotton shirt, leather jacket and my dapper wool cap. After the first half hour, the hat had to go; too hot. After another half hour, the jacket had to go, too hot. How hot, you ask? When I took off my jacket, there was steam coming off my body...and it continuted for half an hour afterward. Finally, towards the end of the day, I had to lose the cotton shirt because I was too cold...it had gotten wet from sweat. Once the shirt was off and my polar fleece vest was on....perfect.
The road to Valcarlos was a nice stroll through the countryside, punctuated by a few gentle hills. It would have been very scenic if it weren´t for the ever-present fog. As the fog started to clear, the terrain steepened, with enough ups and downs to keep my cardiovascular system amused. Passed through a small town called Ayuegi, which is directly on, and divided by the Spanish-French border. Half the town had signs in French and Basque, the other half in Spanish and Basque. Funniest of all, in a town of probably not more than 300 people, two police stations; one for each country. Practically side by side.
Eventually arrived in Valcarlos, now firmly in Navarra, after a couple of hours of climbing and descending. Valcarlos is the location that Charlemagne was encamped when he heard the horn of Roland asking for help way back at Roncesvalles. Must have been some horn...ít´s over 14 km, and on the other side of a mountain. Decided to stay in Valcarlos for the night as 1) My legs were decidedly rubbery at this point 2) I didn´t know how much sunlight I had left that day...turns out I had another 5 hours, and 3) I frankly fell in love with the place.
There is, so far, not a single other pilgrim on the road. In my boredom, I´ve been talking to animals...dogs, horses, cows, etc. Thankfully, none have talked back, so I´m not quite off my nut yet. The only other occupant of the albergue is a young guy named Tiko from Catalunya. He´s in the middle of exploring the Basque country on horseback, but has been held up as one of the animals has tendonitis. It occurs to me that one of the good things about going on foot is that anything that breaks can be either mailed home or disposed of. In the case of a horse, the former would probably be impractical, and the latter would probably be unneccesarily cruel. Of course, on the flip side - when travelling on foot, if anything gets tendonitis...it´s you.
The weather today seems quite nice - not a trace of snow, and the temperatures are reasonable. Not sure why the pilgrims office warned me off of the high route. My guess is they took one look at me and thought "there´s no way this dude is getting his fat ass over the high route, but lets spare his feelings by telling him it´s closed"
Well I didn´t really want to do it anyway, so there.
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