Wednesday July 19, 29.9km/18.6mi
Roncesvalles Village (87.4km/945m) (España) to Shoulder of Urkulu Peak (112.2km/990m) (France)
I woke up late, since my room had one tiny window and it was very dark inside. After taking a hot shower and organizing my stuff, I left at 9am. It was a very late start time for me but this trail seems to encourage that. I spent another 30 minutes poking around the village seeing all the old buildings.
I hiked the 20 minutes back up to the trail, and as soon as I was back up high it was foggy again.
I caught up with two guys from Belgium, and they are also hiking the HRP. We spent all morning walking together and talking about various things, and their English was surprisingly good. I don’t speak any French. For a few minutes though fog broke apart and we actually had a view.
We saw tons of other people walking up here, as one of the Camino routes also crosses this ridge. The were these little emergency shelters in a few places as well.
The infrastructure for the Camino routes seems very well built, as they are very popular routes. The trail junction signs also seemed rather complicated & busy given all of the different trails that pass through here.
As usual, it was foggy up high.
Maxim, one of the Belgian guys, pointed out this neat Alpine flower.
We had some views, but for some reason the fog today refused to lift.
After lunch we scoped out another emergency shelter.
Nearby there was a sign with some posts, and we had 10 minutes of entertainment watching the horses scratch their butts and necks on the posts. Haha!
From that point there was a nice walk on a road for an hour.
But as soon as we left the road, we descended steeply on an overgrown grassy trail, and had to crawl under a barbed wire fence.
Then we climbed up steeply to another pass, up a narrow grassy trail that seemed to have a lot of exposure. Definitely not a good trail for anyone with a fear of heights!
Once at the top of the pass, there was another monument stone. There are hundreds of these along the trail as they mark the border of Spain & France. Maxim decided to get a photo with half of him in each country!
From there we hiked downhill for an hour, at first along a stream and then on a road. We passed hundreds of sheep.
Given my later start, I ended up at an awkward section of trail where there is no optimal camping. I did not want to camp at the bottom of the valley and have a wet tent, so I hiked partway up the next climb to find a spot to camp. I was joined by a guy from Ireland who had the same idea.
The views from this campsite were amazing, but is also quite windy up here. Hopefully the fog lifts, and does not continue to get worse overnight.