St Jean Pied de Port

What an absolutely wonderful village.

Our time here began when we arrived by shuttle from Pamplona. Just in time for dinner - served at 8pm.

The place was buzzing with people either about to start their journey, or in some cases, complete it having walked from Holland, Belgium or Austria. There are people who have walked 2400kms already to get to St Jean and will carry on to Santiago. Others with short holidays will just walk certain stages.

By 9.30pm the dinner was over and the pilgrim office was just opening so we went across and got our pilgrim passports and had the first stamp put in.

One nice thing the albergue had done was to set up a cone into which you could deposit a small capsule containing things you wanted to leave behind or prayers for your walk or whatever. So, in the early morning mist I went up to the little meditation hut, meditated for just 10 minutes (the rooster next door was crowing the whole time) and then slipped my prayers into the cone.

Then it was time for breakfast and to call Alan and Malou with whom we were to spend the day and night before setting off on the walk itself.

It is hard to put into words how wonderful their hospitality was. They themselves were funny, charming, interesting and spoke great English. The food they gave us was superb. They, like many Basque people avoid the supermarket. They buy a pig and make use of everything inclduing making their own terrines and blood sausages. They buy 200litres of bordeaux red and the vineyard comes and bottles it for them, ditto with lamb, fat ducks, sheep and goat cheese etc. We feasted and drank from the moment we got there to the moment we left.

Alan was the original connection because he held a position in the local rugby club which Rob played for. To this day he is an All Black supporter! He took us to Hotel Camou so we could also meet Gaby who had been secretary of the club. As we wandered around the town it seemed Alan, who had been the local GP there until his retirement, knew everyone and half of them knew Rob. Even after we left Alan and Malou we stopped at a shop for supplies and they knew him and then met another of his rugby chronies at the first watering hole on the walk.

I could have stayed there a lot longer but after a good sleep it was time to rise and don our backpacks and begin day one of the trek across the Pyrenees.