A day wandering around Pamplona and an evening of wine, tapas and great company!

Some lunchtime culture in Plaza San Fransisco

A great day!

It’s a big day today – train from Bordeaux to Bayonne, change trains to St-Pied-de-Port and a bus ride through the Pyrenees to Pamplona.

My early morning coffee was inside the cafe this morning, rain overnight.

When I got home Queen D2 was holding court in her chambers but she graciously agreed to a last walk around Bordeaux

The cathedral

What a shame we missed out on this!

The Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) was formerly the Palais Rohan, the home of Ferdinand de Rohan, archbishop of Bordeaux in the 1780’s. D2’s views on the opulence of the churches and cathedrals  in Europe are strong and often expressed, and on reading that it was once an Archbishop’s  palace,  declared it to be “Bullshit.”

The palace was completely demolished during WW2 and subsequently rebuilt.

A youths’ protest against climate change

 

Couldn’t help but wonder whether the projections were on the wall, outside summer movies perhaps?

Off to the station!

Just a little bit happy to be going to Pamplona!

A view from the train

Pilgrims in St Jean-Pied-de-Port

Papa Bear is reading the elevations for the Camino, he’s a bit worried! D2 is just happy to be here!

My favourite view from the bridge in the middle of town

Thank goodness we listened to Papa Bear! I was sure the bus to Pamplona left from the train station, he was sure it wasnt. Eventually I asked in a local cafe, Papa Bear was right! How happy we were to be off to Pamplona!

This happiness was short-lived. As the bus climbed higher into the Pyrenees and the road became more and more windy, D2 and I became less and less well. We hopped off the bus for some fresh air in Roncevalles, hopeful that the trip down to Pamplona would be better, it wasn’t! And oh dear, that spaghetti carbonara D2 had for dinner in St Jean was better going down! I managed to keep my spaghetti bolognaise, just!

But we made it! Tomorrow is another day!

 

Do people in France not drink coffee on the way to work? Do they start work later? Why is is it so impossible to find a coffee shop that opens earlier than 9:30? These are important questions my friends! Having spent some time on Google Maps looking for a coffee shop that opened at a reasonably early hour I found that our corner bar, Le Bouffard, which is about 50m away, opens at 7:00am. Happy Dance!

Papa Bear and D2 we’re awake when I got back and we wandered down for the breakfast that was included in the price of accommodation. These can often be pretty dismal but was delicious here.

We left Papa Bear trying to sort our route for tomorrow, good luck there, and headed off to find a laundromat.

Having successfully done the laundry but unsuccessfully found a bus route that would let us walk into St Jean Pied de Port (frustratingly the website said two buses daily on the route we wanted but couldn’t find a schedule!) we headed off to the Information Centre and the Place de Quinconces and the Girondins Monument.

Papa Bear was in charge of getting us there, his approach seemed to be set off, head in the general direction and you’ll get there! No! That does not work in European cities which definitely don’t work on a grid system, more like a random web  system. We had an interesting wander through Bordeaux nevertheless.

We finally made it to Place de Quinconces, apparently one of the largest city squares in Europe. I say apparently because when we got there it looked like this, the entire Place surrounded with fencing in preparation for a festival.

We could still see the Monuments des Girondins, a monument to the Girondists. Together with the Montagnards, they initially were part of the Jacobin movement. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards. They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and mass execution of the Girondins. This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror. (Thanks Wikipedia)

After lunch on the waterfront we headed off to the Miroir d’Eau, the world’s largest reflecting pool. It is made of granite slabs covered by 2 cm of water.

D2 and Papa Bear were slightly underwhelmed, but I thought it was pretty cool.

D2 had to stop for a crêpe on the way, France really does the best crêpes.

Back to our chambers as D2 calls them for a nap, then off to the local for beer and salad. D2 and I are rather fond of the panaché which is actually a shandy but sounds much more exotic in French.

Many thanks to everyone who has commented on my posts. I know I haven’t answered most of them, but I love to read your comments, they are much appreciated.

• After an early breakfast at the White Horse we had an 8km walk to Maillé where we were catching a train to Poitiers.

Once again it was a lovely morning for walking, but the first couple of kms were hard work. Like many villages in France and Spain, St M is situated in a valley. Papa Bear’s many years of smoking make climbing difficult and D2 and I were impressed with the way he tackled the climb. Like a guide said to me in Nepal, “Slow steps, small steps and you will get there.”

Once out of town we had easy walk through fields of wheat to Maillé.

I am not fond of the kilometre countdown to the next town, you tend to spend the time looking for the next sign rather than just taking each step and each kilometre as they come.

We actually made the whole 8kms without stopping for more than a couple of minutes rest and chat. We were very impressed with ourselves.

Our train wasn’t due until 12:30 and because of our impressive effort we reached Maillé by 10:00am. That was ok, we had visions of sitting in a cafe in the town square while we waited. The station was a bitumen platform with a bench and while there was a village there certainly wasn’t a town square with a coffee shop, in fact there was no shop of any sort!

I found a museum on Google, La Maison de Souvenirs (The House of Memories)  which D2 and I set off to investigate, mainly in the hope of finding toilets and maybe a vending machine!

What we found was a moving tribute to their village, which on the day the Allied troops marched through the Arc de Triomphe to liberate Paris, was involved in an horrific massacre.

The Maillé Massacre refers to the murder on 25 August 1944 of 124 of the 500 residents of the village.  Following an ambush a few days before and in reprisals against activities of the French Resistance, an SS unit organized the massacre and burnt the village. Forty-eight children were among the dead.

This note was found on one of the victims  it says “This is punishment for terrorists and their helpers.”

 

In contrast to Oradour-sur-Glane which Papa Bear and I visited a couple of years ago, the village was rebuilt after the war to its pre-war state.

After an hour’s trip through the French countryside we reached Poitiers where we had a hotel room overlooking the station. We spent an enjoyable hour or so drinking coffee and watching what appeared to be a Deliveroo training session, which involved a lady in black cracking a whip and yelling orders while bike riders with cardboard boxes on their back chased after a Deliveroo bike rider trying to grab a label hanging off a rod attached to the back of the bike.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it apart from one young boy at the back  who cried the whole time he was riding, not sure whether he was crying from pain or because he knew he didn’t have a rat’s chance in hell of grabbing the label.

At some stage during the day what started off as a Plan B or C became Plan A. It had become increasingly difficult to align the track and train and bus lines with our walking capacity and availability of accommodation. As D2 remarked “This isn’t fun and we’re sposed to be having fun.”

So off to a bar to make plans over a beer or two.

Camino Frances (the Spanish Camino) here we come! This is the plan

• Train to Bordeaux, spend a day there
• Train and bus to a town outside of St Jean-Pied-de-Port and walk into town. This was our original destination, and is also the beginning point to Camino Frances.
• Bus to Pamplona for a couple of days then do a bit more trekking, where we know where we are going and what we’re doing.

You gotta love a good plan!

Today was cruisy, a quick charge of the phones  on the bike charging stations,

then on to the train to Bordeaux.

A 2.5 km walk to our accommodation,

Where D2 loves  our chambers! So French!