Day 18 was to be our final day of riding, after setting out from Tours more than two weeks ago. A and I had cycled in rain, and in sunshine. We’d bunked down in more than our fair share of pilgrim dormitories. We’d eaten pastries together; we’d drunk coffee; and we’d visited more churches—representing virtually every century since the Middle Ages—than you could shake a sceptre at; or an orb.
It was to be a leisurely day, cycling (on average) downhill, until we reached the destination that we’d been aiming at since Tours. There was no reason to delay, no reason to hang out any longer in Pamplona: the Camino beckoned; it was time for us to hit the road.
The Roncesvalles Albergue would like people to be on their way by 8:00 am, so A&I were up earlier than usual, packed and ready to retrieve our bicycles from their secure storage, and then ready to exchange our laminated meal ticket for food (below).
Breakfast; (somewhat) comprehensive, though I missed my daily dose of yoghurt.
After breakfast we saddled up and set out on the Eurovelo 3 again, on what was to be the penultimate cycling stage in our bicycle pilgrimage along the Way of Tours.
We had planned a rest day in Pamplona, taking some time to explore the city that Hemingway made famous (to North Americans at least). The annual San Fermin festival, with the running of the bulls through Pamplona’s streets, would start in less than a month, and we wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to be in Pamplona for that.
Wouldn’t this make an excellent souvenir of our time in Pamplona!
We also needed some time to sort out travel details for our onward journey. We’d planned to travel by bus to Bilbao when we reached our end point in Puente la Reina. A had a ferry to catch from Bilbao back to Ireland, and I had a return flight from Bilbao to Vancouver. But we weren’t quite sure about the bus lines’ policies on bicycles, and we didn’t want to leave these things to the whim of bus drivers, so we wanted to purchase our bus tickets in Pamplona.
Our final cycling stage, after our rest day, was to be a relatively short ride from Pamplona to Puente la Reina, where the Way of Arles merges with the “main” branch of the Camino Frances, or French Way. Puente la Reina would represent a kind of closing of a loop for me, since I’d passed through that town twenty years ago, when I’d cycled the Way of Arles all the way to Santiago de Compostela. I was looking forward to seeing what memories might be stirred, to be in Puente la Reina once again.
Starting out at the Port Notre-Dame in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, 8 am
All along the way from Tours to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port we’d been warned about the climb to Roncesvalles, over the pass through the Pyrenees and into Spain. How steep it was; how long it would take, how much we’d wish that we were on foot, rather than en velo.
The elevation profile, which I’d photographed in Saint-Palais (below), didn’t offer much reassurance.
The elevation profile for the climb from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles.
Still, it had to be done, so we planned an early getaway and set our alarm for 7:00, to take advantage of the cooler part of the day.
Every downhill……is followed by an upA particularly brutal section of the Eurovelo 3, approaching Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
Thanks to our lengthy ride on Day 13, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port was finally within our reach: just 40 km (or so) from Saint-Palais. The roads (through Basque countryside) are twisty and very steep in places, but they’re beautiful to ride on, and the downhill sections almost make you forget the ups.
This post is heavy on photographs, light on text—which surveys (of our pair of loyal readers) have shown to be the most popular ratio.
I’m falling further and further behind! In my blogging that is; on the cycle-pilgrim front, A and I continue to make steady progress towards St Jean Pied de Port and the Pyrenees, and Spain.
In the previous episode we’d made it as far as Onesse-Laharie (to jog your memory: chalet in a private chambred’hôte; two TVs), with Dax the next town in our sights.
This episode takes us from Onesse-Laharie all the way to Saint-Palais, and a night there in a former Franciscan convent. Read on, for an illustrated account of our shortest cycling day so far (46 km), and our longest (103 km). As an added bonus: you will read about an over-sharing pilgrim, who might be contagious, and who might end up in the adjacent bunk in a tiny refuge. Coughing.
The Porte CailhauThe Porte DijeauxEntering and exiting Bordeaux via the traditional pilgrim gates
I have a theory that humans have a lot of natural inertia, which can only be overcome through (unnatural) effort: exercise regimes, thrice-weekly Aquafit classes; Pilates; ballroom dancing lessons: that kind of thing. In other words: our natural state is to be at rest. But once you make that (unnatural) effort to get off your couch and go on pilgrimage, you’d be best to just keep right on going, day after day after day. Which would seem to argue against rest days. They are—according to my theory—a dangerous thing.
To support this theory, I can cite a well-known law of physics, which states that “A body in motion (or at rest) will continue to stay in motion (or at rest) until acted upon by an external force”; which (though trained physicists might disagree) I think more-or-less proves the dangers of rest days, since (according to my theory of natural inertia) rest days tend to return one to that natural state of stillness, from which some external force, some unnatural effort, will be required if you wish to resume your pilgrimage.
The rest of this post documents our two riding days post-Bordeaux, as A and I continue to head south, pedaling across the region of southwest France known as les Landes de Gascoigne.
The original plan was for a bicycle trip along the Way of Tours pilgrimage route. Long days of cycling in a state of religious ecstasy, nights spent wrapped in a threadbare blanket, in humble gîtes run by volunteers, subsisting on a diet of stale bread and gruel. It was to have been an experiment in self-denial, and devotion. You’ve seen how far we’ve already slipped from that ideal.
The idea of rest days had been introduced to the itinerary as a concession to our advancing years (well, my advancing years at any rate, since A appears to be ageless, and sets a very brisk cycling pace). And the pastries had been added to our pilgrim diet fairly early on, since we’d discovered that actual gruel was far less appealing than theoretical gruel.
Things like this have become a staple in our diet
The rest days so far—in Poitiers, in Saintes—have proven a great success. Every once in a while I could change out of my hair shirt and into one made of linen. We could be tourists for a day, rather than penitents.
Our rest day in Bordeaux was to be similar, with the added bonus of female companionship. But it was silly, really, to think that a single day in Bordeaux would be enough. There’s so much to see in Bordeaux: high culture, art and architecture, history, excellent restaurants. It’s a nice-sized city, not too big, not too small; something like a scaled-down Paris, and perfect for discovering on foot. But impossible for anyone to take in even a small portion of what Bordeaux has to offer, in just one day. Which means that I’ll simply have to return in non-pilgrim mode, when I can spend more time exploring this beautiful city with J.
Just hanging out, at Mona
But we did our best with the time we had, the four of us just hanging out, A and I taking full advantage of the guiding services of J and R. What follows is an account of how we spent our rest day in Bordeaux.
Rain continues to fall in Poitou Charentes, but A and I pedal on, wearing our bilious green reflective vests (above). The next two days of riding, documented below, took us from one rest day to another: from a day off in saintly Saintes, to a rendezvous with J and R in Bordeaux.
A&I have spent the past day lounging in cafés in Saintes, as gentlemen of leisure in the les Charentes are wont to do.
We’ve eaten (or at least I have eaten) white asparagus, which, as you will know from previous posts—and/or from my Instagram feed—is currently in season. We have dutifully followed a painted green line, which the local tourism people had thoughtfully inscribed upon the city’s pavement, the line leading us from one notable sight to the next.
A has been working at improving his français on this voyage, using various digital tools, such as Duolingo; and a very animated, bilingual maîtresse named Maud, on Instagram. I do what I can to assist as we stroll along. I’d happened to overhear a local use the word “quasiment” earlier, while we were lounging at our café, so I explained (as best I could) its meaning and proper usage, as well as its origin: a reference to the famous hunchback in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Our rest day in Saintes, and our journey from Melle to Saintes, are covered in this latest post, which, as usual, is profusely illustrated.
Our ambition is always to get an early start, so that we might arrive at our destination mid-afternoon, in plenty of time to find a place to stay, and the rest of the afternoon available for reading (etc) in a café. “Oh we’ll be away by 9:00, certainly,” I say to the hospitalier in Poitiers when asked, and in fact the policy of these refuges is that one must be gone by 9:00 am. Why is it, then, that the time stamp on this morning’s starting selfie (below) says 9:36 am? There’s a lesson here, I think: something about goals being things to aim at—to be striven for—but not necessarily achieved. This could prove to be a most useful, a general purpose, rationale.
The Way of Tours 