What a day. What a night.

Let’s start with the night.

Dinner outside at the hotel was great, a salad with decent bread and a glass of wine. We’d been hearing stork noises all evening, a low thrumming noise so after dinner we took a short walk around the village to find them. No luck until we returned to where we’d been sitting and looked up at the roof in front of us.

A low metallic stork-mimicking drumming noise came from the contraption on the roof. But clearly storks had or were nesting there, witness the sticks.

In order to get a better view, I nipped inside the hotel, ran up to the first floor, clambered on top of a table and stuck my head out to get this picture.

😟 – no storks.

We asked one of the waitresses who asked another and was hushed into silence. Storks are a protected species and our suspicion is that the unfortunate storks had been turfed out illegally once they’d started building a home for their prospective offspring. Ties in with the lack of respect shown to the elderly Dorothy yesterday. Shame on them.

On to the night which from 10 p.m. until 11 a.m. this morning was rent by lightning, loud thunderclaps and torrential rain. Very impressive but pity the poor pilgrims leaving the shelter of their albergues to make their sodden way up the slopes of the Pyrenees this morning – whilst we stayed warm and comfortable in bed.

We left the hotel a little before we were forcibly evicted and drove over the pass, topping out at 905m to Pamplona where we purchased our €4.90 (each) bus ticket for the 50km ride to Roncevalles, leaving Pamplona at 6 o’clock.

We spent the interim 5 hours having lunch, drinking coffee and generally moaning about how hot it suddenly was (31+).

The bus journey was full of Spanish pilgrims heading out to Roncevalles to begin their Camino. Noisy, cheerful and happy to be on their way they chattered amongst themselves for the next hour as the bus wound its way around the obligatory hairpin bends.

We emerged and headed en masse for the albergue. It has 180+ beds but we were a full bus load and pilgrims would have been arriving all day. It was late and there was no guarantee that we’d find a bed. Dorothy had checked and there were no other beds available in Roncevalle — period.

We were slightly quicker than some and after hanging around for an hour or so were allocated beds 25 and 26 in block D. There were 8 beds remaining and some 20+ bedless pilgrims hanging about listlessly as we were shown to block D.

It was grim.

Seriously, unquestionably grim.

18 beds stacked in a room the size of a room filled to the gunnels with 18 beds. Mould on the walls, the nearest toilet some 100m away. No showers, no amenities, simply rusty beds with ancient mattresses piled up cheek by jowl. No windows, no ventilation, no way.

Dorothy was sent to give our apologies and to offer the beds up to more needy pilgrims. The Dutch hospitaleros were probably used to the those of us more squeamish than others and were very understanding and money exchanged hands.

Now what to do.

No beds at the inn.

The nearest village is some 3 miles down the valley,

Dorothy is tired and I’m all for calling a taxi and returning to Pamplona when we decided to test booking.com’s assertion that there were no available rooms in Roncevalles tonight.

We sent Dorothy into the very posh Hotel Roncevalles next door to the albergue and what do you know, they had an apartment available on the second floor. With a double bedroom, separate lounge and bathroom for the princely sum of €90 we leaped.

We had dinner in the restaurant downstairs, Dorothy has had a shower, there is a private bathroom within 10 feet of the bed and it’s quiet.

Bliss.

😊

Buen Camino