Episode Transcript
DAY 1 MORNING BEFORE WALKING
OK, microphones working. Camino Day One well, Camino de Santiago Day One, in Saint Jean Pied de Port, after sleeping incredibly badly because of our loud screaming neighbour all night. We're ready to go.
Yeah, the sun is like just starting to rise. It’s not above the mountains yet, but you can see a nice pink hue to it. Or maybe pink because of my glasses – a blue hue. Sorry. Yeah, I think that's the glasses. And then we're about to walk up the main road and then over the Pyrenees. So it's ranked difficulty 3 out of three, let's see how we go.
We've been told it may take quite some time to get over this mountain, and the woman at the Pilgrim’s Office was shocked and dismayed that we were going the whole way in one day. So let's see if we're shocked and dismayed by the time we arrive. See you on the other side.
DAY 1 SUMMARY
Hi everyone and welcome to Is This The Way, a podcast where we walk the Camino de Santiago, the famous 800 kilometer hike across Spain. I'm Francesca and I'm Gaven and today we are Day One.
We are walking the Camino, we are setting off and we're walking from Saint Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles. And I hesitate because we still don't know how that's actually pronounced.
No, but we're going to stick with that and be consistent, at least. Yes.
And in French it's Ronceveaux, which is much, much easier. But anyway, please feel free to let us know the correct pronunciation. I'm sure there's a Spanish double L = Y type thing in there. So I apologize as we constantly bastardise the language.
Yes, and insult all the Spanish people who understand how to actually pronounce these things. Yeah, sorry about that.
So each day as we walked the Camino to Santiago, we recorded briefly in the morning what we expected for the day and where we were going. And then we sat down at the end of the day and recorded our thoughts for the day, things we talked about or thought about or saw along the way, anything interesting that we thought was worth noting or chatting about. Now we're sitting down six months later and recording all the in-between bits that make this into a podcast. So hopefully we provide a little bit of information and context for you.
You heard us before, about to set off, which we recorded that the morning of the walk. And then after this will you'll get to hear how our day went.
So Day One, as you said from our previous episode, you've arrived in Saint Jean Pied de Port, you've gone to the Pilgrim's office, you're excited and ready to go. And then you get up very early, and then you start your journey.
So one of the things that I really like about the Camino is that you pass through all these different autonomous regions across Spain. I think we passed through about 5 or 6, but we'll confirm over the course of this podcast. On day one, we cross from France into Spain at about the 20 kilometer mark. Unfortunately, there's not really anything that actually indicates that you've passed over, and we enter into Navarra, which is the first of our autonomous regions. It’s particularly known for being linked to the Basque culture.
To quote the guidebook, “you cross the Pyrenees from France to Spain, taking in breathtaking mountain scenery to arrive at a cozy medieval hamlet at the end of the day.” And I think that just understates what a beautiful mountain scenery it really is. It's spectacular.
Yeah, the views are spectacular. It's lovely. When we went it was very lush and green, a lot of sheep along the way in various fields. And a lot of uphill and a lot of downhill and then a little bit of very steep downhill. Yeah, but it is a pretty tough day.
Our guidebook has a difficulty scale of 1 to 3 and it rated this as a three out of three. So there's only a couple of days in the whole hike that actually rates the difficulty of three. And then normally because of extreme temperature, or lack of stops, or extreme distance along the way. I think this is probably because of the extreme climb.
What difficulty rating would you give it?
I think we should probably rate it out of 10 because a scale of three doesn't give you a whole lot of leeway. I think because it's the first day and you're probably not, you haven't really like broken yourself into walking yet and because there's just so much uphill from basically about the second kilometer, I think, because you get out of St. Jean and immediately just start going uphill. So I'd probably put it like an 8, I think.
I definitely think it was one of the hardest days of the Camino and it's probably quite brutal that it's the first day, but I think - don't worry - the first day it's quite difficult and then it gets a bit easier from there.
Yeah, there are a couple of nice stops though, at the Refuge de Orrison at 7.7 kilometers, good lunch stop. It's up on the hillside. It's got a nice deck with big red umbrellas. You'll come around the corner and you'll see the red umbrellas out ahead of you. Breath a the sigh of relief. There's water and cold drinks and some food there and an amazing view. And a bathroom. Don't expect too much from the facilities. Bring some tissues with you, you will need them, but otherwise it's a lovely place to stop. We didn't stop for very long and we probably should have stopped for longer. We thought they'd probably be a little bit more along the way, but there's not a lot other than this one stop, so definitely have a proper rest after all of the uphill. I think it becomes a bit more gradual after this, rather than the really steep uphill at the beginning.
And then you arrive in Roncesvalles, and we stayed at Hotel Roncesvalles, which was amazing. Other than no air conditioning, but that's a very consistent theme across the Camino, I'd highly recommend it as a stop. There’s a lovely courtyard to sit out in. It's a really small town and there's basically nothing there, so I definitely say choose that as your stop for the night.
Be warned, there's no supermarkets. There's the albergue, La Posada, there's Hotel Roncesvalles, and I think there's a couple of small B&B's. I think there was a restaurant and a couple of bar / cafes. By the time you get in in the evening, most things aside from the restaurant are probably closed. The Albergue will put on Pilgrim's dinner, I'm sure, and the restaurant in the Hotel Roncesvalles where we stayed was open and the restaurant was excellent. It does a Pilgrim's menu, but it's not the typical, very low cost Pilgrim's menu. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's a really nice restaurant, like proper white tablecloth stuff. It's in like a kind of cavern-type feeling.
I think it's an old like Abbey building or something because it's attached to the church, so yeah, it's beautiful location. Yeah, big stone walls, really nice atmosphere. Yes, a little bit more than your average Pilgrim’s meals, but definitely worth it to celebrate the end of your first day on the Camino, I think we really enjoyed it. We had some nice wine from the region and desserts that are typical for the region with the Basque cheesecake, and I think it was Navarran wine that we had. It was definitely a pleasant way to cap off the day because you just certainly wear yourself down.
That's a little bit about the route today. Let's see how it went.
DAY 1 AFTERNOON AFTER WALKING
Alright, so end of day one.
Yeah, it was a very punishing day. We literally walked across the Pyrenees, up and down.
I think we've maybe walk into this thing would be a lot easier than it actually was. A little blasé and not really thinking about it that much.
Yeah, it's quite funny because we were making fun of people at the Pilgrim’s office yesterday for being wholly unprepared, and I think we've got a bit of a taste of…
We were much more prepared because we actually had somewhere to stay last night.
I know, but I think the physical difficulty of today was immense and definitely unexpected. But we made it. I mean, we're sitting outside our hotel in the courtyard, it's right by the church, so we might get to hear the bells at some point. In the shade with a beer and a coke.
Well, how's the Estrella Galicia? You said tasted like Australian beer.
It does taste similar to Australian beer. So we have to decide who did it first. Was it the Spanish or was the Australians? Clearly the Australians as the older and more developed society. No offense to the Spanish.
Probably would have killed for this mid-afternoon. It was a very, very long day. 1400 meters of ascent over 25 kilometres. It took seven hours in total, including stops. But it took us about 5 1/2 hours walking. Because Runkeeper paused when we stopped, so we actually just have our walking time at about 5 1/2 hours, so not too bad.
The day started quite well. What time did we get up? Six-ish. But then you walk through this quite famous gate then cross the bridge, a bridge to start your pilgrimage. It has the shell in the paved stones. That was like 5 to 7am that we walked through there and that's when we started.
And then the elevation gets quite extreme. Yeah. And then you walk up. Yeah, nonstop.
So like this seven kilometre ascent - one of the big things of today I was thinking about is physical fitness. Then after the seven kilometres we did like another 13-14 kilometres ascent. Very slightly less steep, but the same amount of increase.
So I think the crazy thing was like 7 kilometers really steep, 13 or so kilometers of gentler incline, but still quite steep, and then 5 kilometers of steep descent. And I mean in terms of ranking them, I found the final part the hardest and probably the second part the second hardest. So bizarrely, the actual steep incline at the start was the easiest part.
Yeah, I found this steep bit the worst actually, but then stairs in my mortal enemy, so it's to be expected.
That starting bit, I was just, dripping with sweat. My heart was really pounding. I had to take more rest stops than you just for like, recovery.
It was definitely heart pounding, but I guess I'm a little bit more stubborn or a little bit more conditioned to just push through some of those things, from training and various other things where I will just keep going.
I think I actually if I hadn't watched The Way last night, I probably would have been the same. Because we watched the Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez movie last night. It's really good. I'd really recommend anyone who's going. I think we'll probably talk about it quite a bit.
We got to his first stop on the Camino today, La Posada. So the town we're in is the town from where he stops the first night of the way and stays in the crazy 100 bed hostel / albergue, that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore, because otherwise I'd like to go in and have a look. I enjoyed in particular how they took their time and it was a reminder to me. That we need to enjoy the journey as much as the getting to places part. So I think as a result I took it a lot more easy today when I probably would have pushed through otherwise, but hopefully it's better for my like health than just pushing.
I generally took it easy, but I just like to stop at different places so when I'm walking up and you can see an incline up ahead, you up ahead of you with a little bit of a ridge I’ll always try and get to that ridge and stop there so that it's a bit easier to get started again.
Yeah, whereas I was just looking for like a good view, and that was the thing. The first part, I mean that really the entirety of the journey, the views are absolutely incredible. Just like literally mountains as far as the eye can see.
THREE THINGS RIGHT
Three things we did right today and three things we got wrong. I think we did the right thing by leaving early. When it was still cool and having cooler weather at the beginning, and getting ahead of the crowds a little bit, and getting here in the early afternoon was good. Maybe we did take advantage of the couple of stops along the way. I think that was good, we probably should have actually stopped for a little bit longer.
Yeah, I agree. So there are a couple of really nice stops, actually. The first one was the cafe, the Refuge which is at the top of that first really steep incline. We had like an orange juice and coffee and stuff and it was the most incredible view ever. The second one was up at the top where you're looking over the Pyrenees. Yeah, the small food truck. And we stopped a couple of places for stacks as well. It's good that we stopped, at each of the places that had like, food and drinks and things available. We probably should have stopped at that first one for a little bit longer and just relax a little bit more. It felt a little bit too early because only like 1/2 odd kilometres in. You know, you kind of wanted to like break the day a little bit. Get into the second-half before you stop and relax. So you've always got like less coming up than what you've already done.
True. But I guess maybe that's a mentality that we'll have to break and just, as you say, take advantage of stops when you find them and stay a bit longer.
Is there anything else that we did today that was a good idea? Um, I mean, I think, and I don't want to keep coming back to it like the fitness levels thing, I think we're a bit blasé about it, but at least we actually did quite a bit of prep before we went. We're not super unfit people you've been doing like 3 months of PT, I'll run like kind of an easy 10km between 5 and 10km a day. So I think that probably just gives you a lot more stamina –
All done at sea level in Singapore to prepare you well for the altitude of crossing the mountains.
Despite that, it was really difficult and it was a difficulty rating of three in our guidebook, which is the hardest, by the way. It's a scale of up to three. And I can totally understand why. It's one of probably one of my big reflections on today is if this is the sort of mark of the fitness level that you might need, you basically need to go right now as in don't wait until you're retired because I think you're not going to enjoy it as much. I think you just have to make a lot of changes, and some of them are probably sensible changes as well, like you'd stop more frequently. There were actually 2 paths. There's the route through the Pyrenees and there's the route down below. And people can also send their bags through ahead of time, so someone will pick them up and take them to the next town, the next town. So I think there are like tweaks and things you can do, but that was a really, really physical day. At least even though it was really tiring, I never felt like this is too much, overwhelmingly like out of my depth, something that's good.
So along with that though, I think the guidebook was saying have a have a bag of at least 30 to 40 liters and we've got 24 liter packs, with water bladders in them as well, so they have a bit less space. And we definitely worried that there's not going to be enough space. You certainly make compromises in how much you bring and having to like, wash things. Even the day before we started we had to. I think it's still the right decision to go with the lighter packs like we've used in the past for shorter trips. But you have to carry that every day. My shoulders are aching after today.
They may feel quite manageable without the water. But if you're like us and I highly recommend you do this, like have a what was that 2 1/2 liter hydration bladder. And we drank the whole thing…
with 10 kilometres to go…
and that's one of our mistakes that we made which we can come to you shortly…
I mean you need that in the summer because this is currently July looks like what was it 33-34 today I think. Yeah, 34 degrees. Like there wasn't much shade - there was towards the end, but early in the morning it was all in the sun.
It wasn't too bad, though. Being used to humidity, not having humidity was really nice. It's hot, but not really unpleasant. But even without the humidity, it was physical and I was sweating like mad.
THREE THINGS WRONG
Alright, so. That's probably more than three things that were good ideas. Or things we probably did well leading up to this one, maybe three things that we screwed up today.
Yeah, I think water. Water, yeah, definitely. So we did have 2 and a 1/2 liters of water each in a hydration pack with a drinking hose, so you can kind of sip along the way. I think it can be like really misleading how much you're drinking, cause you just having a sip now, a couple of mouthfuls, a mouthful kind of thing. And for me, I think I've never stopped and like had a long drink out of my pack the whole time, until it ran out I was thinking there must be loads left. I'm just having like a little sip, a little sip as we go. And when we passed the last water station, both of us thought that we still had plenty of water because we hadn't run out yet basically. But I guess the fact that you haven't run out doesn't mean you're not just about to run out next time you go for a drink in a couple of kilometers. So that was with pretty much 10 kilometers to go. I think we're like it's 10 kilometers. We'll get through that pretty easily. Should have enough water if we run out in that ten, It's probably OK.
Yeah, it wasn't.
I didn't really bank on running out immediately with like 1 mouthful left. Handy hint though, if you disconnect the hose from the water bladder, you remove the air vacuum and you can get one more mouthful of water out of it. True. Which is locked in the hose. Yeah, if you feel like dying. Which we were basically were.
And probably also combined with, it was like a good thing and a bad thing, but we took the wrong path into town. Well, at the end we took the wrong path, but the signs were confusing. No, they were. It really wasn't very obvious. Because, we're told don't take the steep path through the forest. Take the road. And it will be the one to the right. And that's the regular way, not the Napoleon Way which goes over the mountain. So I know that pointed out to us at the office at the start, like go to the right, but then the signs seem to be saying the opposite. So rather than taking the go to the right, we took the regular route advice. And went down the really, really steep hill.
And literally, like at the Pilgrim’s Office yesterday, the lady was like, “people get lost. People literally injure themselves. It's really steep there.”
You'll get lost in the haunted forest.
And it was it was so steep. Particularly when we’d run out of water, we were quite tired. And it's like all, like one wrong foot and you would twist an ankle or something. So I walked very, very slowly. And I was almost doing like, you know, when you go skiing and you try and go slalom. I was trying to do that. Like, tried every possible way of not falling over. It's really hard.
Yeah, downhill really grinds your toes into the front of your boots. So it was really steep.
Yeah, it's like obviously really bad for your feet after - my feet are feeling quite good today. As in, I don't have loads of blisters. I put blister plasters on before in the morning, so at least I prepared in advance.
Don't take the wrong path. At the end of day one, when you come to the downhill segment into town, go to the right and take the paved road. Don't go down the really steep path through the forest. Ignore the signs. Otherwise, yeah, it says the Camino path goes both ways. Yeah, go to the right. Yeah, or if you do, then take two hiking poles because one was helpful. But if you had two, then you'd feel way more comfortable. The other way is about a kilometer longer but you probably would have got through it much faster because you'd be following the road that winds down through the switchbacks rather than just going straight down. Yeah, that would be loads better.
Do you have a third one? I have a third one.
Be really, really aware of chafing? Ohh yeah.
I have some nasty chafing in vulnerable places. So I was wearing compression pants which are usually so running which are great. And they don't change very much, but today they must look like slightly out of place because it was a long day and it was sweaty and very hot. My very upper inner thigh on one side is very chafed, and my butt is chafed. It's between my butt cheeks because, you know, the compression pants, they're like compressing everything together. It was fine in the morning, but the problem with these things is you take them when you need to stop for a break and you have to peel off these compression pants. They're really hard to get back on again, and to get everything back in the right place. Particularly for men. So it was only upon arriving at the hotel and stepping into the shower, I had to scream a little bit.
Yeah, and you've put some sudocrem stuff, which should help.
Definitely bring something to put on chafing and blisters. Try and try out your clothes as much as you can beforehand in similar environments. I've worn the same things before on long walks of 25 kilometers, and I wear them running routinely. And in a really hot climate where I'm look like I've had a shower by the time I get back. And not had any issue but I guess just like the long, the uphill and different motions. And the one thing I haven't ever had to do on our other practice walks was take them off part way through the day.
I ordered some croquettas for us
I had to take them off and put them back on again in the middle of a really long day. So it's something to be aware of, to make sure everything's sitting in the right places and have things to treat chafing because it will happen.
I think that's definitely a big one, I think the minor one is have something in your bag that you can…
Are you saying that my chafing is minor?
No, no, I'm saying yours is the major one. Mine is the minor one, which is like have something in your bag that you can snack on. We've both brought a bag of sweets like the natural confectionery company snakes.
And we needed things with much more artificial colours and flavours…
It's just really helpful to have something, and particularly because we technically have an apartment in the block that we're staying in, and we're like, “oh, where's the nearest shop?” And there's no shops in this town. So I guess it's just being aware that self-catering can be a challenge sometimes in small villages.
But it does have a really nice restaurant though, and a really nice outside area to sit and have a drink in the afternoon. This place is great. It's fine that we couldn't get any food.
And now we have croquettas, so we should wrap up. I was upset that we couldn't find Emilio Estevez's grave from The Way, which is spoilers for The Way, but you'll figure out those spoilers within a couple of minutes anyway. Very, very early spoilers.
I think that's that kind of sums up today. We’re just gonna have another drink or two and then heading to Zubiri tomorrow, which is another like 22 kilometres or so. But we'll talk about that journey more then.
We'll see if my legs fall off before tomorrow.
How do your aches rank?
My shoulders ache. They're probably like an 8 out of 10. Down the middle of down the inside of my shoulder blades, down my back from the pack. Yeah, so they're OK when I'm just sitting, but if I move in certain directions with my shoulders like to go up from lying down to push yourself up. Really, really sore. OK, other than some chafing. The chafing is sore in a different, special way. But otherwise, my legs are OK. They're tired. My feet feel a little bit. A little bit like worn out. Yeah, but otherwise I feel OK. So it'll be interesting to see how we feel tomorrow. How about you?
I basically have no aches at the moment, so let's see if that's like an overnight thing. Where I’ll wake up and can't move in the morning.
I don't think I want to talk to you anymore about this. I'm surprised. No chasing, no aches, no blisters.
I was expecting to feel terrible, but actually, I feel fine. Let's have our croquettas then.
Alright, that's it. Day One. Buenas Noches, goodnight.
OUTRO
Thanks everyone for listening.
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Great. Well, I think we'll wrap up by saying Buen Camino!
