Day 2 of our Camino takes us over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles. When I walked this section last time, I had glorious blue skies and clear weather and fantastic views, unfortunately this year, we can see about 50 meters in front of us. Basically it was down to low cloud and very chill winds, but even so, the walk was really great across the top of the mountains and down the other side. We hoped for some sun to come up during the afternoon but that never really happened.
It was actually quite an eerie sensation walking up through the clouds. At times, there were quite steep drop offs at the side of the path and you could sort of see down through the cloud a little bit. Some quite chilly winds but generally the path was fairly well sheltered.
Coming down into Roncesvalles, we did not take the direct route because that can be very slippery in wet conditions, so we took the right hand road route, which is a little bit longer but we were lucky that it was sheltered from the cold wind, and it was actually a very pleasant walk down, a lot of it down through trees. We arrived in Roncesvalles just in time for lunch.
A lot of people online had recommended to us not to focus too much on the pilgrim’s menus but to look out for the Menu del Dia.
When we got to Roncesvalles, we went to Casa Sabina and there they served lunch from 1 til 3, and we had the Menu del Dia. It was awesome!
Three courses with coffee and wine all for 14 euros, probably one of the nicest meals we’ve had since we’ve arrived in Europe.
Fallen Pilgrims
On the way across the top of the Pyrenees on the Spanish side, we came to a memorial for Jorge Ferreira, who died in January 2002 on his Camino. He must have been walking in very berserk conditions and snow at that time of year. He was a Brazilian man. Unfortunately, he laid there for some time before pilgrims coming along the track found him. We paused for a moment to tribute Jorge and we’ll see many more memorials like this along the way.
See Full Gallery: Orrison to Roncesvalles
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