Episode Transcript
DAY 2 MORNING BEFORE WALKING
OK, so day two in Roncesvalles. Is that all right? We never found out how to pronounce it. Ronceveaux, if you're French, and Roncesvalles. That's a challenging way to start when you can't pronounce the place you're going to.
However, it is lovely here. We've decided to fix one of our mistakes from yesterday and have breakfast before we go. So we're sitting outside with cortados and jamon sandwiches. It looks delicious.
We're sitting in this really quaint courtyard opposite the church, so enjoying a quieter morning. It's 7:30 already before we start our walk today. It's a little bit of a slower start after the aches and pains of yesterday. And it's about 22 kilometers to Zubiri today for our next stop. So a little bit flatter, which is nice, so let's see if it's a bit easier than yesterday. And let's hope my chafing goes away! All right, see you then.
DAY 2 SUMMARY
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Is This The Way, a podcast where we walk the Camino de Santiago. I'm Francesca. And I'm Gaven. And it's Day 2. Yes, day two. Enjoying some chafing from the previous day – ouch – hoping that it will go away today.
As we said in the opening, we're walking to Zubiri. To quote the guidebook today, “we enjoy shaded forest trails, pass rivers and small villages, explore Hemingway lore and a Romanesque bridge.”
Yes, Romanesque – a term you'll become very familiar with over the course of the Camino. There are many Romanesque bridges. We should probably actually look up what a Romanesque bridge is. It's like a Roman-ish bridge or a Roman style bridge.
So what does our guidebook say for this in terms of difficulty? It says that two out of three today, remembering yesterday, it was a three out of three and was very steep. And I think we rated it as an 8 out of 10 on our more granular difficulty scale. I don't know. I'd probably give it like a six out of 10 maybe.
The way the day works is that it's mostly really okay. It's like very just nice easy walk, very pleasant, shaded, through these beautiful towns. And then the end is this really rocky, steep descent.Yeah, maybe like the last 5 kilometers or so, I think. And it's actually, again, another really challenging walk. So yeah, I think it's probably 6 because it's four for the first 2/3, and then eight for the last bit of it.
I think eight's a bit harsh, to be fair. It was steep and it was hot because there's no shade that bit as well. Yeah, it was really rocky and loose and hot, but the rest of the day was really pleasant. It was completely different to the first day.
OK, So the guidebook says it'll take you about 5 to 6 hours. It took us just under five hours. Yep, pretty accurate then. Not too far off.
So what are the some of the interesting things that happen today? When you start the day, the first thing you see is a sign that says Santiago, 790 kilometers on the road. That's a bit of a shock to the system. Yeah, it's a huge sign and it just highlights how far you have to go. And it's a road sign as well. That's how far you have to go, following the road, not following trails and up and down mountains and things. But other than that, you start heading out of Roncesvalles on like a nice shady path through a bit of forest and some trees is really, really pleasant.
Yep, and a fun fact, the forest was actually supposedly a place of witchcraft in the 16th century, and nine women were put to death by the Inquisition. There are a few signs and memorials and things around for them, basically highlighting the fact that these women were very poorly treated back in the day.
There's a lot more places to stop today. Like I mentioned briefly, the first day you've kind of got like the refuge on the hill, and then a food truck if it's in season. Today we go through a lot more small towns and villages, and there's bakeries and cafes and little stores and things that you can stop at. I think we ended up having two or three rounds of ham sandwiches, or jamon sandwiches, as we call them. We stopped at the San Juan cafe where we had another sandwich.
Yeah, but that was quite nice, it's a little courtyard and old stone buildings. And I think the church was at the end of the courtyard there. Yeah, and my favorite town that we passed through was called baguette. And Burguete, maybe Burguete. You keep saying baguette. I keep on thinking we're talking about bread. But we're not in France anymore.
No, but this basically feels still very French. It felt like a very French town, really beautiful, these red tiled roofs, all these beautiful flower pots and things. And apparently it was mentioned in Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. He stayed in this town and as we were walking through it, I could understand why. I was very, very attracted to it. And I wouldn't mind going back and staying there sometime. It's very pretty scenic little town.
The other thing of note is, like we said, the end of this last five kilometers or so is a very steep decline, so really good to have your walking stick for that part. And then you arrive in Zubiri, and as you're hear, there's a wonderful river flowing through it with lovely cold water for your feet. So definitely recommend strolling through that.
How do you arrive in Zubiri? Over a Romanesque bridge! Exactly. That goes over the river, which is really pleasant. And we got our food for the evening from a local shop there. Yeah, there was a little butcher / general store right next to where we were staying. So we bought some jamon and some bread and tomatoes and salad stuff and sat in the garden where we were staying and had dinner. And there was a little bar and restaurant there as well, so we sat outside and had a drink. And this is where we first discovered the Tinto de Verano.
The best thing we found on Camino. Which we then drank for the rest of the Camino, basically. It's a very classy cocktail. It's red wine and lemon soda. So we saw some builders who'd finished were drinking them next to us, and you went in to ask what it was and we say Tinto Verano, Tinto de Verano or Tinto de ‘Burano’ in other parts of Spain as the dialect changes. And it's delicious and refreshing and basically like a simplified version of sangria. So we had it everywhere. It comes to a tall glass with lots of ice most of the time, so it's a nice alternative to beer. Which is your other option. That's pretty much everywhere along the way. So I'd highly, highly recommend that you drink those across your Camino. Or buy the ingredients at home and make them while you're listening to the podcast. True, because we make them at home now before we record the podcast.
We can even post the bottle of wine that we get to make our Tinto Verano. It's super cheap and super tasty. And it's from one of the places we walked through on the Camino, which is why we started getting that one.
All right, well, let's see how we got on!
DAY 2 AFTERNOON AFTER WALKING
Day two afternoon in Zubiri. We had a much more relaxed day than yesterday, now chilling out, sitting by the river after icing our feet in the river, which is really, really cold.
Yeah, we might take another quick stroll into the water if we feel brave enough. It's ice, Ice cold. We've had an incredible day actually. A lot shorter – well, what feels a lot shorter, but actually, in reality, maybe it isn't. I think just because it was much flatter, which is the main thing.
I think time, time wise, it was similar. It was a little bit shorter, about an hour or less walking time than yesterday, for just a little bit less distance. But it felt like a lot less effort. It was definitely what you'd expect a more traditional Camino day to be like, which is walking from village to village. Yesterday, I think was kind of an unusual one in terms of there really not being anywhere to stop. You just have to kind of keep going.
Whereas you walk through 3 or 4 villages today, really quaint, cute ones. They're these beautiful, like flower boxes in the windows. They're so lovely. There's like pink and red flowers. You know, I'm very, very charmed by, by the kind of aesthetic of this place. It's definitely a little bit different today with towns dot along the way the whole way and few more places to stop, from quite early on, actually. That was a nice change from just walking up a mountain.
We were looking at the difficulty rating in our guidebook and it was 2 out of three. And at the start we were like, what? Like don't understand that, but actually it was like a bit more undulating in terms of like up and down. They were some uphill bits and then actually really steep downhill bits at the end. So I guess it was a bit more difficult, but I'd definitely say you need a broader rating system than out of three because like really yesterday was so, so much harder than today.
The path at the end for like the last three to four kilometers was very broken up and rocky and gravelly as well, so it's a little bit harder to walk on. That took a lot longer.
The main thing today was like you really felt the scenery change from like more French scenery to Spanish. Suddenly you're walking through pine forests and there's all of the farmyards and the meadows and fields and things that we're walking through just feel really different to yesterday. Lots of meadows, lots of bales of hay and things all round up on the top of the mountain, like strewn around. We got to see the sheep, the young sheepdog in action, which was very cool.
We got to play well sighted heroes and find someone's glasses for them. And I definitely felt her pain. This girl had walked into town and then realized that she left, lost her glasses somewhere - we thought she'd come back like 5 kilometers, and it's like really steep uphill back from town. So we kept kind of an eye out. I mean, I didn't see them, but you managed to somehow. They were like literally hidden in a bush. I think she'd basically come back up about probably about two kilometers somewhere. She left her bag at the route marker, and back to where we were, which was very, very hot and exposed, and looking for glasses. It's only when you when you mentioned it afterwards as well, it must be really hard to find your glasses when you don't have your glasses.
Someone else had told her that they saw them on the side of the on the side of the path, but not where exactly, so we're walking along and after a little while we decided we'd probably miss them. And then it's caught like a very, very small little flash of reflection of one of the lenses because only literally the corner of them were sticking out up. Out from underneath the leaves that were completely buried. I don’t know what she was doing for them to fall off into that bush…
We found the glasses and saved the day. We are the heroes of that story. So, yes, we feel good about our Camino today. Yeah, we waited for her and everything, we were trying to be good pilgrims. So that was, that was our good deed, as you say.
And the other thing is you start to see familiar faces. There are a few specific people that we've seen now, yesterday and today. We haven't gone very far yet, but I wonder how many of these groups we’ll continue to see. I guess you pick out the ones that are kind of interesting. There's a monk that we've seen the last two days. There's a lady and her nephew, I think from Korea. It's another Korean family that left before us and then got back after us, a long time after us. A guy walking with his daughter who we saw on our very first day in St John, before we even started walking. Ironically, the people I was asking at the Pilgrim's office if it was the right queue, you happen to then see another 5 times already.
You feel like there's some sort of community even just through passing the strangers by, which is quite funny. It'd be interesting to see how much people spread out over the next few weeks as well. So I think once we start having rest days or a couple of longer days and things – or where we start having not rest days and other people have rest days, you'll start to get out of sync with those same groups and then maybe end up synced up with another group of people that you see each day. Everyone stops for drinks and snacks at slightly different times as well. So you often end up walking past the same people two or three times in a day.
I think luckily today, now that we're getting into the swing of everything, we had fewer of the things we did right and things we did wrong. In fact, it was just a pretty relaxed day for us really. And so I think we had a bit more time for starting to do all of that, contemplating about the future and the sorts of things that for a lot of people are the reasons for embarking on this sort of journey.
We did get a few things right after yesterday though. We had breakfast, we made sandwiches last night and had breakfast and coffee before we set out in case there wasn't anything. I tried a different solution with my walking pants to resolve my chafing issues. So apparently compression running tights are not so great for walking all day in the heat because they keep the heat in, which is great if you're running, but not so much when you're walking all day.
So what's your current scenario then? Not to wear them. You're going commando? And when I say not to wear them, I'm wearing shorts over the top of them. Not butt naked – that would be very unpleasant, probably for everyone. Well, I have a shirt on and backpack. I like to feel the breeze.
Do you have any reflections from the day or anything you thought about in particular? We started off like thinking a little bit about like things in the future and what we might do after this when we have to go back to the real world and get jobs and things like that again. But I guess the interesting thing I realized is that we've been thinking a lot about wrapping up our old lives and leaving Singapore, where we've lived for a long time, and leaving our friends behind and worrying about all of those things. And worrying about, like leaving jobs and really handovers and all of those kind of things that had to be done. And haven't really thought about any of that since we got here, which has been really nice. So I switched to even just thinking about the future, and you realize I haven't thought about any of those things that have been weighing on you for the last couple of months – or about anything that was weighing on you before that, to be honest, with work and various things.
It's been a massive stress relief. Even just these last couple of days, my posture is better and I just feel like so much lighter mentally. It's already a significant shift into a more positive way of thinking as we've moved all the mental pain to shoulder muscle pain and leg muscle pain.
And it just opens up like the mind to think about things. So one thing that we've been thinking about is can we create a coffee farm? Can we actually do that as a future opportunity? I think that's something that we'll like probably talk about more over the next few weeks. Maybe as we think about what that might involve. But we're in dreaming stage at the moment. So currently all paths are open to us. I was thinking, I became like a qualified coach and is there something I could do there, which is a relatively footloose career move. We talked about writing and we both want to write something – do you actually take the time at some point to do that? So anyway, it's nice to just start carving out all these potential futures and I guess you can narrow them down over time towards something more concrete. But for now it's nice to be in the dreaming stage where you can just think about lots and lots of different things that you would like to do, and go from there.
What are your takeaways from today? I think it's just it as you say, it's the shift into this more positive sense of well-being. I'm just feeling like I haven't felt stressed at all today. Which is very unusual as someone who's relatively anxious most of the time. So it's been really positive from that perspective.
So now we'll try and walk over this river, this ice cold river and then tomorrow we're heading to Pamplona. We're actually arriving on what should be the last day of the running with the bulls, luckily not to see any of that happening, but I guess we'll see some of the aftermath and potentially some celebrations tomorrow. And we’ll pay the associated rise in accommodation costs for the night. Now we'll head on through this very, very cold river in front of us.
OUTRO
Thanks everyone for listening.
We hope you've enjoyed Is This The Way and have taken away some inspiration and ideas about how you might approach the Camino. If you'd like to get in touch or find some more information about each episode, head over to our website: https://isthistheway.net .
Buen Camino!
