Day One walking from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncevalles (27km)

I got up this morning and was served breakfast by a delightful french woman Janine who is known as the ´mere de pelerins.´ Because I was the first one up I was treated to a basque chocolate to go along with my bowl of hot chocolate and slices of baguette.

At 7:30am I started down the street wearing my tuque and mitts because the morning mist was quite chilly, however shortly after I started walking up the first mountain I was down to a t-shirt. Earlier I had estimated it would take about one hour to walk five kilometres, but when you are climbing a mountain with a big backpack it actually takes about two hours. I followed the upper Napoleon route that went to 1410m altitude and it took about eight hours to get to Roncevalles. The scenery included sheep, cows, ponies, more mountains and hunters ( I really am not clear what they were hunting but there were a lot of them).

I walked alone for most of the day but I could usually see a couple pilgrims just ahead of me and a couple behind. Of the group that arrived at the Refugio tonight there are two British women and then one Austrian man, one French man, one German man, one Spanish man and one American man.

One small adventure to end my day was that about 3km from Roncevalles I switched from hiking boots to running shoes and had tied the boots to my bag. Once I arrived I noticed one was missing so I had another hour walk searching and eventually finding the runaway boot.

I also learned that I forgot to pack ear plugs I hope there are no more snorers tonight.