Let’s start with last night’s albergue failure.

From the outside the new part looks like this.

But block D is probably an old cow shed

and internally looks like this.

With a close up of Dorothy’s sleeping corner.

Can anyone spot the black mould? Not ideal.

No matter. The hotel was great and after breakfast we set off backwards on the Val Carlos route.

The Val Carlos route is the default route in the winter. It’s lower than the classic Napoleon route and somewhere along this route is where Roland blew his horn to little effect and was wiped out by a bunch of angry Basques who Charlemagne had apparently pissed off by unnecessarily (in the view of the Basques) sacking one of their small towns. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland). The image above is of Roland and his poor horse who, like most horses in these situations hadn’t put a hoof wrong but ended up dying alongside his master anyway.

Here’s a misty picture of two modern thoroughbreds.

The weather today was cool, overcast and at the start ….

Spanish food lacks fibre but today brought some small relief.

The route to St. Jean via Val Carlos has perhaps 80% of the journey on the public road with 10% spent fighting one’s way through thick spiky, nettled undergrowth

resulting in …

We came across this sad memento to a very private grief. The translation is ‘in this place you have left your smile and your love of life’.

The route was most definitely not high peak hopping but it had its moments.

but any shortcomings were somewhat recompensed by tonight’s hotel, a beautifully restored 17th century Basque ‘cottage’ by a delightful chap who used to be the curator of the Basque museum in Bayonne before leaving to create a labour of love.

He kindly dropped us into town where we ate bream at a lovely restaurant (the Cheshire Cat) in the centre.

We came across an interesting shop, serving a huge assortment of pulses, peppers, chillis and salt (amongst others).

Her markup was huge and it’s not at all clear who her clientele is but I’m sure she’d be successful if she franchised the concept out in Oxford.

We walked back in the gathering dusk and slept well. No internet access unfortunately.

Buen Camino