Still Wednesday.  Many the place names are familiar to me because they lay on the border between what was Vichy France and Occupied France in the Second World War, and this is the route along which Mary Lindell (in my next book) organised her escape line for stragglers for the British army at Dunkirk and downed airmen.   That is another reason for wanting to cross the Pyrenees by the high route tomorrow so that I can share something of their experience as they escaped internment or imprisonment.

Liz and Ian are on good form and am treated to two generous whiskies – this first I have had since before Shrove Tuesday – while we discuss plans for the end of the month.   Penny and Liz will join me at the parador at Santo Domingo de la Calzada; it’s up to me to make the booking and Liz to find the means of getting there, probably by train.

Their chateau – neogothic and artdeco - is at Osserain in the French Pays Basque, guarding a crossing of the Saison, and occupied by Highland regiment after the Battle of the Pyrenees and by the Gestapo during the last world war.    Orthez and Sauveterre de Bearn are fortified medieval towns, fought over by the French and the Norman kings of England.

            However, let’s see what the weather is like tomorrow and decide if I shall take the high road, the old Roman road now called the Route du Haripse and the Route Napoleon, or the low road, which Charlemagne used through Valcarlos when he was fighting the Moors.

Thursday 12^th April

Wake to the tolling of a church bell and cry of an owl, followed by the dawn chorus.    First light is about 7 and, having read about pilgrims who rise at 4 to get to the next place and – rather un-Christianlike - bag the best beds (can they all be Germans?) resolve not to start walking any time before first light which is about 7.

            And the weather seems fair: I can see the Pyrenees, though my attempt to tell a Frenchman in his language that if you can’t see the hills then it’s raining, and when you can see them, it’s going to rain, fall flat.

Liz kindly drives me to St Jean Pied de Port where we visit the pilgrim office and I’m assured that there is ‘auncune risque’ in taking the high road.    We meet Pierre Bouresmau at the Boutique du Pelerin, 32 rue de la Citadelle, and I collect my poncho – packed in an impressively small pouch and weighing almost nothing and Liz selects a bastón which she thinks will be good when walking her dogs.   We take coffee sitting in the sunshine, buy a sandwich and water and say farewell in the carpark.   On the stroke of noon I pass out through the Port d’Espagne.

No sooner have I set out than it begins to drizzle and the drizzle turns to a steady downpour, so out comes the rucksack cover (I had thought of leaving that behind) and the poncho, and before long the leggings.   It might keep my pack dry but inside this clobber I am soon soaked, whether by leaking rain or sweat or I suspect, both.

 The five miles to Refuge Orisson are every bit as steep as I remember from my reconnaissance here last September.   If anything, with a full pack and the rain and mist sweeping around me, it seems steeper.   1:6 for much of the way, with short stretches of flat.   It amazing to think that 200 years ago 30,000 French troops with two regiments of cavalry marched up here to try to outflank Wellington’s advance into France.

I catch up with Catlin, a retired American surgeon.   This is so unexpected – I never expected to overtake anyone at my pace – that I walk the rest of the way with him.   He is 74 years old, so between us we have nearly a century and half.   We stop at Hunto for coffee and share some chocolate and a banana while we also readjust our rainwear and the rain turns to stair-rods.   No sooner do we step out from our shelter than the rain stops – the law of natural cussedness!

But we are making good speed:  it is 14.15 by my new wrist watch and we are over half way to Orisson.   The rest of the way is in glowering cloud which occasionally opens like curtains to show the dramatic peaks around us, with snow on the high hills, and the valleys below.  Several hundred yards through the greyness are uphill, there’s a short flat stretch and we pause and shake hands to celebrate that we’ve done it.  It’s just gone 16.00 and the Refuge Orisson lowers through the mist!

Inside we meet Catlin’s grandson, James, and share a beer.    I discover they are keeping in touch by radio handsets.   

Accommodation is a six berth dormitories, where one bunk is already occupied by a woman from Florida who has bagged all the blankets and complains that there’s no heating.   True, but ungracious.    In the dining room, the languages are mainly English (including Irish and American), Dutch, German, and Italian.   Most seem to be allowing themselves, six, seven and eight weeks to get to Santiago.   There’s one young, Spanish lothario trying to chat up three girls, Japanese, an Irish and American.

Dinner is communal: soup, beans and pork slices, and postre.   There is lots of good wine and laughter and mine host makes us all introduce ourselves.   Jesús the Lothario is first then me and round the table,  what a mixed bunch – most going all the way to Santiago, some like me dropping in for a couple of weeks, and several Spaniards only doing a few days. 

But very tired, and when the bar closes at nine, I go straight to bed.    I am however up about four for a chat with an Irishman who like me can’t sleep because of (a) the snoring and (b) he’s used to only six hours sleep.   Returning to the dormitory – is this the first time I’ve slept in a dorm or a mess deck since I was a midshipman? – all is silent and I get a couple of hours decent rest.

  

Friday 13th April

Axel the German is first up starting in the dark to pack his rucksack and I commence a new Olympic competition which is roiling and stuffing a sleeping bag in the dark.  Breakfast of stale bread and café con leche is 0700 to 0730.   Axel is away like a racing snake wishing us ‘God Bless’ and the rest straggle after him at 0800.

Catlin and I are now firm friends and he is my excuse for taking thing easy.    The view over France are fantastic, but soon it begins to snow.

What follows if the most amazing, exhausting, exhilarating experience of my life, crossing the Pyrenees in the snow.   Two or three inches fall and about six of us stick together as a little flock, Catlin, me, Jesús, Mariko, Tara and Rosheen.   Jesús is hopelessly ill-equipped in a pair of suede boots, and a stick he has seized from the roadside and keeps slipping over until one to girls lends him her stick.    However much I may have thought of a bastion as an affectation, it proves it’s worth today, even so I suffer one bad fall when walking on the edge of road and a chunk of turf gives way, but the stick saves me.

But it is a huge privilege to cross the mountains, 17 kilometres (10 miles) rising and rising to 1,500 meters is about the most adverse conditions imaginable, sometimes only able to see the next marker and the footprints of those before us and then entering the forests where the tree branches are covered in snow.   A new hazard arises when we take a brief break and the wind blows frozen snow and ice on our heads.   Eventually we find a refuge and crowd in to share our food and drink.

On the way Catlin and I talk medicine, and reflect that’s between us we have more years and probably fifty more to spare!   Jesús entertains with singing Spanish poems (to the girls), and I fall occasionally into conversation with Tara, who wants to be a writer, and Rosheen who has got a job to go back to in a microbiology lab.   It is difficult to keep any conversation going with Mariko, whose English if very limited, but clearly she if very brave girl to undertake such a journey so many miles from home.

Most of the walk is uphill.   I thought we had cracked this yesterday but most of the way today is uphill through the snow, and the descent into Roncesvalles is as the it says on the signpost ‘muy pendientes’, and the effect on shins and knees is agonising.

We arrive at Roncesvalles at 1500, manned by some ineffectual Dutch volunteers, is well equipped and welcoming.  Two of my Falstaffian Spanish friends from last night, Miguel and Henrique who are escaping their wives,  have already arrived and eaten well in the village, and Axel has been here for hours.

The pilgrims’ hostel is however new and well-equipped.