After two days of struggling with blistered feet, this morning was a joy. After the luxury of vending machine coffee, baguette with ham and tomato and a pastry for breakfast, we were on the road by 6:00am. After the inevitable climb out of town the countryside levelled out and I enjoyed the crisp morning air, listening to the birds welcoming the day and watching the lights of the first town on the trek getting closer. Soon we could see the wheat fields bordered with red poppies emerge from the dawn, and the walk through the olive groves was accompanied by the anticipation of our first coffee con leche.

Unfortunately that wasn’t to be, there was nothing open, but at the next town a bare kilometre down the road we could hear the chatter of pilgrims before we came over the hill to the welcome sign of an open bar.
Despite the inevitable ups and downs of the hills and valleys it was a lovely walk.

D2 decided to go on ahead to the next town to do some shopping and I had a leisurely stroll chatting with pilgrims along the way, the Australian couple who were on the their third trek, a young Italian man who gave me chocolate and told me he had brought his book for writing but was too tired to lift his arm at the end of the day, and a Canadian woman whose blisters were so bad she was wearing her thongs.
No matter how short or far the day’s trek, the last couple of kilometres with the town tantalisingly close in the distance is always a struggle, but having done her shopping D2 came to meet me ……and tonight we are pampering ourselves, a hotel room with our own bathroom and towels!!
But for now it’s off for a beer or
sangria and relax!

Popped my head out of the hotel entrance to take a photo of the street which only an hour ago was full of people enjoying a drink in the sunshine!! Back inside for the rain gear!

Like mud!
I spent a restless night our second night in Pamplona, inspecting the bathroom plumbing and listening to the relentless drip! drip! Only to find when we emerged into the plaza from our hotel at 6:00am that it was raining. By the time we extracted our rain gear from the very bottom of our back packs we were quite wet and cold, but as always the
walk warmed us up.

An hour or so into the day’s trek we hit the trails, the wet trails, the very muddy trails. So not only did we go up and down hills, we took the trail with us on our boots and pants.

Despite the wind and rain the scenery was quite spectacular

At the top of our climb there was a sculpture of the pilgrims that was quite stunning, but the cold wind and rain blowing across the hill hurried us on. Although the sign to Sidney did give us a smile.

To the Sherpas who lost their lives on Everest.

Without doubt I wouldn’t have been doing the Camino if it wasn’t for the encouragement, incredible patience and kindness of our guides who got me through the trek to Everest Base Camp (and Richard’s care)
They are with me every step of the way now, and my mantra “Small steps, slow steps madam and you will get there” gets me to the top and bottom of every hill and makes believe I can get through the whole 820kms!

If the dirt tracks were all like this, flat, wide, shady, not too many stones, it would be fine

Unfortunately most of them so far aren’t!

Some of them are knee jarringly downhill.

And worst of all you know it’s going to be followed by the adrenalin pumping, oxygen sucking uphill.

And that’s about all I can say about the first two days through the Pyrenees, a hard slog, uphill and downhill.
There were times though when the simple things brought a smile to our hearts. On the second afternoon,hot with still quite a few kilometres to go, we came across a van in the middle of nowhere where we had the best coke ever

And on a freezing cold morning we had croissants cooked in a wood fire oven and hot coffee, absolute heaven!

So we have made it through the first few days, very proud of our first stamps in our pilgrim passports.