Our travel words and pictures
The Meseta was not as advertised. For those who haven’t heard of the Meseta, let me explain. The Meseta Central is Spain’s vast, high-altitude central plateau, covering over 210,000 square kilometers across the interior of the Iberian Peninsula.… More
We have walked 282 kilometres. 282! That’s like walking from Canberra to Sydney. I just measured it on Google Maps. Canberra to Sydney is 284 kilometres. And it’s taken us 16 days. 16 days to… More
‘I’ll be the bull and you be the runner’, I said to Paul. ‘And Emma, can you film us?’. We were on Calle del la Estefeta in Pamplona. The bull running street. The street where… More
It was super exciting to arrive in Saint Jean Pied de Port (SJPDP). The train from Bayonne was small. A single carriage but so many other pilgrims! Well maybe a dozen. It’s not hard to spot a modern day pilgrim. None of them look like the AI generated version of me as a pilgrim that my friend Dwaine posted on my office door one morning on my last week of work.
An hour later and we were in SJPDP, so long now a town that has lived in our imagination. Its cobblestoned street is the setting for the start of the film ‘The Way’ with Martin Sheen and another more recent Australian book and movie about the Camino called ‘The way, my way’. The latter of these I had watched on a plane coming home from a conference in Columbia in 2024.
‘We should just do that’ I suggested to Emma. The conference I had just finished had been stressful and the idea of going for a really long walk appealed greatly. I liked the idea of waking up each day and just, walking. The fact that the walk started up over the Pyrenees before making its way through the Spanish country side of forests, cities, fields and towns was an added bonus.
SJPDP was idyllic. A medieval walled town on a hillside at the base of the mountains. It was so beautiful I was excited just to be there. Almost as excited as I was to get underway. What would happen over the next five to six weeks? What will we see? Who will we meet? Despite having planned this for so long I really had done very little research on even the route that we would follow. Not enough brain space while working perhaps, although I think a part of me didn’t want to know what was to come. Just to let it unfold.
We found a place for dinner outside the walls of the old town. It was on a river with a view back over the gate and bridge we would cross the next morning. The start of the walk. We talked about why we were doing this. For Emma it was the adventure. For me… a chance to checkout of the day to day. I am tired. My brain is tired. Mostly work, which has this tendency to become an all consuming mix of people and politics and pressure to deliver. For Paul and Khia I will leave for them to describe to those whom they choose.
The next morning started slow. We only set out to walk 9 kilometres for our first day. The way of Saint James is steep from the outset and Emma had gone to great lengths to book us a place at the Borda Auberge. A booking that many other pilgrims were jealous of. It is highly sought after but with only a few beds it’s a bit like booking concert tickets. Staying at Borda breaks up an otherwise long first day climbing more than a thousand metres up and over the mountains into Spain. We stocked up on lunch and some snacks and headed for the gate at the start of the walk.
I asked a passing pilgrim to take a photo of us on the bridge. His name was Martin. He was from the USA and he had just retired from his career as an engineer. He obliged before asking if he could walk with us out of town so he didn’t get lost. We’d not taken more than five steps and had met our first friend.
A short walk through SJPDP and we started heading up, walking on a country road through a picturesque agricultural scene. Birds were chirping and Paul started to ID them with an app on his phone called Merlin.
The higher we went the bigger the birds got and soon we were enjoying flocks of Eurasian Griffons, with wing spans approaching three metres, spiralling in the thermals over the mountains. As we neared the height of our first days walk we were higher than even the Griffons. Seemingly within arms reach, they sped past us, one after the other along the side of the mountain.
We walked through Orrison, the first option for a stop on the Camino Frances. In my mind it was at least a village. In reality, a stone building with a lovely balcony overlooking the valley below. We bought coffees and hot chocolates and continued on as the fog rolled in.
By the time we reached Borda 15 minutes later (around 2pm) we could barely see 20 metres. Borda is run by Lorenzo. A pilgrim himself who had purchased this place as an old sheep farm in 2019. In his own words he then swapped the sheep for pilgrims. He now hosts a dozen pilgrims a day in his charming auberge on the side of the mountain.
Lorenzo prepared a delicious, home cooked meal in his cozy little common room. Before dinner he told us all his story before inviting everyone to say why they were walking the Camino. We met Robyn from NZ. An organisational change consultant who the year before had walked the 600 km Le Puy through France, which finished at SJPDP. She was walking the Camino because she wanted to finish the journey all the way through to Santiago de Compostella. She said the Le Puy had made her more settled and she wanted more of that in her life. She was 70 years old, but bright as a button and moving like a human many years younger. She took a shine to Emma and her organisational talents. We also met Tracey, from the US, with her deep gravelly voice. Tracey had walked the Camino four times before and couldn’t stay away. Lorenzo told us we would all be back for the same reason. Mike was also from the US, but when it came his turn he teared up and couldn’t speak. We walked with him the next day where he told us his wife had recently passed away. ‘I’m an A to B kind of guy’ he said. ‘My wife, she was the one who always encouraged me to stop and smell the roses’. She had walked the Camino before she died and Mike was out to follow in her foot steps. Louise was another walking on her own. There was a sadness with Louise. She introduced herself as a mother and an ex-wife who had no idea who she was herself any longer. She was walking to rediscover herself. There were others too.
Already this walk was taking on a tone. A sense of community from day one with people we’d met just an hour beforehand.
The fog was even thicker the next morning. This would have bothered me in years gone by. I would have been infuriated at the thought of the views I couldn’t see on what was likely the one time in my life I would walk this way. A conversation with my friend Hugh a week before we left Australia had however planted the notion that I would walk this Camino with equanimity. It was foggy and so I would enjoy the fog.
And enjoy it I did. Immensely. It was mystical high up on the mountain and my eye was drawn to the detail of everything that I could see with nary a thought to what I couldn’t. Wildflowers and figures emerging and disappearing in and out of the mist. I fell into a photo frenzy and could scarcely have been happier – taking in beautiful things.
We were all in high spirits. We laughed a lot though I cannot recall now what we were laughing about. I think Paul and I were behaving like teenage boys. Riffing off my mishearing a conversation on the train where I thought Khia and Emma were talking about lingerie pines (it was really Monterey pines).
Mike caught up to us and we laughed with him too. We asked him to take a photo of us in the mist. I gave him explicit instructions and then gave him a hard time when he didn’t follow them. The other passing pilgrims must surely have felt we were all mad.
The higher we went, the brighter it got and then a most unexpected thing happened. The skies cleared and we emerged above the clouds. Crystal clear and stunning, the green mountain pastures stood out against the white backdrop. Extraordinary.
We crossed from France into Spain at an innocuous looking cattle grid bridge finding the high point of the crossing at 1420 metres a little later. We all lay in the sun or sat and ate lunch airing our toes in their toe socks on the mountain pass.
We walked five more kilometres dropping 600 metres in height before arriving at a converted monastery, now the Roncesvalles Albergue, and into a scene of chaos. There is nearly only one place to stay in Roncesvalles. It sleeps around 280 pilgrims and it seemed like they were all trying to check in at once.
That night we ate at the pilgrim dinner where we met Bill, Bryan and Victoria from the UK. Bill in particular was larger than life. He too had walked the Camino four times and was back for more.
There is a sign on the outskirts of Ronscevalles that says 790 kilometres to Santiago (by road). We stopped there briefly the next morning for a photo before joining pilgrim rush hour on the way out of town. The fog had descended once again overnight as we walked along a gentle path through beech forest along the edge of a moss covered stone wall.
Two villages later and we came across a cafe for breakfast, filled with pilgrims, including some we knew. Tracey was there, as was Bill, Bryan and Victoria. Here we are on the other side of the world stopping in at a cafe we will likely never see again and bumping into people as if we were in the cafe downstairs at work.
Recaffeinated and fed, we headed off again, over a wooden bridge, onto country roads which wended their way through a patchwork of fields and forest. The road became single track, and the single track moved always in and out of tunnels of vegetation. The fog cleared and the beech trees overhead were vibrant shades of green set off nicely by their black branches.
We stopped for lunch on a random bench in another random little village where I almost broke Khia. She was on one end and I the other with the legs somewhere in between. When I stood up she fell down landing on the arm she has only so recently had put back together with surgery. Eek.
No harm done, Khia bounced back. And we walked on ending our day in Zubiri where the Albergue Emma had booked turned out to be adjoined to a medieval bridge over a waterway flowing through town. Emma and Paul took a swim while Khia and I watched on.
We resumed the next day with an encore of walking. Past a magnesium mine, and then on down a valley towards Pamplona. Paul declared he needed a wee somewhere along the way and I got the silly’s again. I broke out into song. ‘Ah weeeeee, Ah weee, Ah weee ah wimba way’, to the tune of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. Turns out I can be quite immature when I’m not being serious.
No mountain views today but the flowers were nice. A walking cottage garden composed of everything I spend my weekends pulling out of our garden back home.
We finished day four 22.5 kilometres after we started. Footsore and tired but with an apartment to recover in the middle of old town Pamplona. But that’s for another time.
‘What’s wrong with this one?’, Paul wanted to know.
It just didn’t have the right vibe for good coffee. That was what was wrong. Paris is of course known for many things. The city of lights. The city of romance. But the city of coffee? Many coffee shops in Paris have this whole Paris thing going on, with colourful flower boxes, wicker chairs and little round tables lining the street, positioned just so for people watching. The coffee however leaves much to be desired.
It was however coffee time, and despite having walked past a dozen or more discrete specialty coffee shops in the same part of town the day before, they were now nowhere to be found. It’s very difficult to manifest just exactly the thing you want precisely when you want it.
So we plonked ourselves down at Maison Bichet, an aesthetically attractive cafe, and ordered two cappuccinos and a cafe au lait. The cafe looked like everything you could hope for, but the coffee machine behind the counter was no La Marzocco.
When our coffee came it was weak and burnt with fairy floss like milk froth extending for an inch above the tepid brown liquid. There was a light sprinkle of chocolate dust for the two cappuccinos.
We were crestfallen. It was an otherwise perfect Parisian day. The sun was shining, it was 20 degrees. We had just been for a cruise on the Seine on the hop on hop off Batoboat. The Seine was sparkling, and clean. I understand they cleaned it up for the Olympics and it looked good enough for a swim.
That particular morning we had intended to hop off at Jardins Les Plantation, but that wasn’t to be. Someone sleeping rough had parked themselves right where the Batoboat alights. Still, hard to think yourself hard done by when you’re minorly inconvenienced by someone who has just spent the night sleeping on the pavement.
Instead we headed off to the north, in search of Saint Martin Canal, the Sacré-Cœur and Montmatre.
We had spent the day before this, our second after arriving in Paris, doing laps of the Seine and its sights on the Batoboat. It was all so French! I mean there were French flags fluttering in the spring breeze atop the Hôtel de Ville, Musée de Orsay and of course the Eiffel Tower. Actually… maybe there was no flag on the Eiffel Tower. But then there doesn’t need to be, does there?
I figured any day in Paris was a good day, because in the scheme of things there are not really that many days spent in Paris. Not for your average Canberran anyway. The tower was resplendent and I wanted one of those photos where you make it look like you’re holding it up in the air from the tip by positioning your hand just so relative to the camera lens. We didn’t get far enough back from the tower though so it didn’t quite work.
Cest la vie. We found a boulangerie, fromagerie and supermarche to make up for it, before having a picnic in park overlooking the Seine. These were good times.
Our time in Paris wasn’t all so picture perfect. Back to the coffee shop. Khia abandoned hers after a single sip. We paid the exorbitant 21 euros for three abysmal coffees, and headed back onto the pavement.
I wanted to visit Canal Saint Martin. I’d read a blog on must see things to do in Paris which promised a charming district of galleries and coffee shops all set along a leafy boulevard arching over the canal. There was a leafy boulevard over a canal, but the rest of what was advertised seemed to be missing. It was a bit grim, run down and lacking the Parisian charm of La Marais where we had been the day before. Still there was a boat traversing a series of lochs which made for entertaining viewing.
It got grittier after that as we made our way from Canal Saint Martin over to the Sacré-Cœur. Where did the charming Parisian streets of our first day in the La Marias go? When we had stumbled into the charming Place des Vosges (a fashionable square where famous artists such as Victor Hugo have lived) and spent a half hour dozing in the sun in the charming park with fountains and gallery laden walkways in buildings around us? And where the owner of a closed toy shop saw us peering in the window and came out to open it for us just to show us around.
The charm returned as soon as we climbed the stairs to the Sacré-Cœur with views out over the city. We went inside the soaring domed basilica. More basic than Notre Dame, which we had visited the day before, it was impressive nonetheless. Still I just don’t know how I feel about these places. Inspiring and off putting all at once. The stain glass windows are nice.
Notre Dame had a carved relief which included images of babies being stabbed with swords. It wasn’t quite how I remembered it from 21 years ago when Emma and I first visited, but there it was. Khia remembered her bible stories and informed me it was King Herod who had heard of a prophecy of the coming of a king. He didn’t want to be usurped so thought it better to slaughter some infants lest one of them grow up to replace him.
Notre Dame had a big fire back in 2019 so perhaps it’s unsurprising that it wasn’t quite as I remembered. The fire destroyed the timber structure supporting the lead roof which also turned to liquid and ran down into the cathedral. It could have been worse. The vaulted stone ceiling prevented more damage inside the cathedral itself. The entire place had to be scrubbed clean nonetheless and roof and spire rebuilt. I’ve got to say the facelift has done wonders. It’s magnificent. I mean really. The dark stone work I remembered from twenty years ago is gone and in its place, glistening white limestone forming the vaulted stone ceilings soaring overhead. Gorgeously painted antechambers line the nave. They picked a great colour scheme. A little dark and moody perhaps but no denying the Catholic Church has taste, or good interior design consultants at least.
Meanwhile back out at the Sacré-Cœur, Paul was feeling the pressure. He needed to deliver a quality coffee for Khia. Khia likes a coffee around mid morning, to which I can relate. Cafe Maison Bichet had missed the mark badly and Paul was not keen on seeing Khia go disappointed.
He got excited after consulting Google and declared he had found the best flat white in Paris! Suddenly we were off on a mission. We blew through the hyper Parisian scene of Montmartre (read tourist trap), plunging down steep stairways into more delightful and charming streets (read still touristy but not OTT). Round a corner. And there it was. Spree Coffee. Heavenly choirs sung, Ahhhhh!!
Paul ordered flat whites from a delightful Parisian father and son combo. Who said Parisian’s were snooty? The coffee was from Mexico, with undertones of chocolate according to Khia’s palate. The scene was perfect, a sunny afternoon under the shade of an awning on a cobble stoned street. We sat and we watched the world go by. Paris style.
This all but sums up our three days in Paris, with the exception of our stop at the Tuileries Garden (one of the hop on hop off locations on our boat tour) and an evening dash to the Arc de Triomphe.
At the Tuileries there was icecream, right where Oliver remembered it from ten years ago when we had spoken to him a short while beforehand. Ah, but that was not all. There were boats too and a pond! Little tiny wooden sailing boats for rent. 6 euro for 30 minutes. Paul didn’t hesitate, later declaring it the best 6 euro he has spent in Europe. He shoved it off into the pond where it tacked and turned all of its own accord while he and I ran around the pond lined with sunbathers sprawled in chairs, looking for where it would come ashore. There were other sailors too, but none of them older than 10. May we never grow old.
On our last night I was struck by a dose of FOMO and wanted to visit the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Élysées. One metro and one train later (paid for twice by Paul because his metro travel card played up and not paid for at all by me because my metro travel card played up (I jumped the gate, don’t tell anyone) and we arrived at the Arc just as the sun was setting. We circumnavigated the roundabout admiringly, stopping at a park bench to watch traffic with no rules when a pigeon took a dump from the tree above right onto Paul’s foot. Shit happens.
Au revoir from Paris.
“Do you think that if I wore my merino t-shirt, merino long sleeve, and merino cardigan and then my raincoat that I would be warm enough on the Pyrenees?”, I asked Emma.
Emma said, ‘I think you’d be a sheep!’
Ha ha. So funny Emma is and still I’m left pondering, do you need a puffy coat in addition to all that merino to walk the Camino in April? It’s an extra 412 grams!
We went for a training walk with Paul and Khia in Sydney a couple of weekends ago. We’ve named ourselves the toe sock pilgrims after all four of us concluded toe socks to be the sock of choice for pilgrimming. Paul even asked AI to write us a theme song.
Just a month from now, we, the toe sock pilgrims, will be in Paris on our way to Saint Jean Pied de Port (or SJPDP as we prefer to call it), the start of the Camino Frances. The most popular and well known of the various pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It’s an 800 km walk and we are so excited!
40 days where our existence will boil down to waking up, packing up, walking, eating, checking in to an albergue (pilgrim accomodation) eating again, sleeping and then doing it all over. No meetings, no briefings, no budgets to clear, no strategies to devise, no spreadsheets or data to trawl through.
On the long flight home from a work trip to Colombia in late 2024 I watched a movie about a fellow who walked the Camino de Santiago. I was exhausted after an overly stressful two weeks at an international conference and the idea of walking, just walking, was just what I needed. It kept us going. We love having an adventure to look forward to and now we are in the countdown to making it happen!
But first, we have had to plan, pack and train. Though we have undoubtedly spent many more hours planning and packing than training. Just last weekend we got the kitchen scales out and weighed every last item we planned to put in our packs. My reading glasses weigh 79 grams. Did you know that? 79 grams. My pack in total weighed 8.58 kg without water, which is too much! I have to lose half a kilo. I need Ozempic for my pack.
Anyway, back to the training walk. We walked from just near Middle Harbour all the way to Bondi. It was 67 km of the 80km Manly to Bondi walk, in and out the nooks and crannies of Sydney Harbour.
The harbour is spectacular, with long stretches of bushland wending their way round headlands and beaches all of which create the illusion of being a long way from anywhere. Then there are other stretches which make you feel like you’re in the suburbs, but the not the kind that most of us know. The kind of suburb where you can watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart from your balcony on Boxing Day. Fun.
Any ways, off we went with Paul and Khia. Parked the car, got out and started walking up the street. We made it 400m before someone thought it would be good to check if we were going the right way. We weren’t. So we turned around and went the other way.
Then we walked and talked, mostly about toe socks… and other gear. If you’re ever in a communication slump with your partner, you too should walk the Camino. It’s endless hours of discussion about the virtues of merino vs polyester, ponchos vs raincoats and whether or not you need an umbrella?
My proudest purchase is my merino underwear! I told Paul I was packing $180 dollars worth of underwear. Two pair of boxer shorts and a pair of briefs. Total weight 170 grams. That’s three pairs of underwear valued at average of $56 each. Paul’s underwear were polyester. Oh for shame.
Paul’s proudest purchase on the other hand was his umbrella. Light weight and packing good value. At 160 grams it came in at just $1 per gram! It was supposed to bucket this day in Sydney, but held off until the second day just as we made it past Potts Point. The skies opened! Not really, it was just a gentle shower but Paul stopped dramatically as the first drops fell, reached backwards over his packed and pulled forth his silver umbrella like King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone.
It was a dramatic moment. Then he popped it open and strapped it to his pack, striding on through the city with a hands free protection from the rain comically overhead. Emma had an umbrella too and I could have sworn I heard, ‘go go gadget umbrella’ just before turning around to see the two of them strolling with hands free rain protection.
We walked 27 km on day one, through beaches, coves, headlands, past defensive cannon sites from yesteryear, taking in harbouside mansions, yachts and ocean liners and finally under and then over the Sydney Harbour bridge. And we reflected, upon the merits of my merino underwear vs Paul’s polyester.
Point Piper was particular fun. Not for the views, you can scarcely see a thing walking around Point Piper. The streets are like being in a canyon with walls made from mansions. Every property a protectorate unto itself and built in such a way as to deny the casual passing Pilgrim in training even the merest glimpse of the million dollar harbour views. No, it was not fun for the view, but rather for the proliferation of profound, prophetic and poetically pointless alliteration of powerful ‘p’ words that we came up with to amuse ourselves while we pondered the professions of privileged practitioners plying their trades to purchase these plentiful homes.
Oh and then there was also the Point Piper resident out for a run whose concern for the natural world extended so far as to deviate from his side of the street to ours, to let us know in passing of a turtle that had escaped the bushland and was heading up a driveway. He noted that he had not time to rescue the poor lost creature and suggested that we may however like to do so. King Arthur can’t bear a damsel in distress so quickly sped to the lost turtles aid. Having picked up the poor creature, taken it back across the road and setting it free, we pondered whether in fact there may have been a pond at the top of the driveway it just returning home?
We spent our first night in a tower at Circular Quay. The pool deck had views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.
Our second night was at Watson’s Bay at the Watson’s Bay Boutique Hotel. Fun fact about Khia, if she requests chocolate and you come back with chocolate ice cream she will love you forever. Good to know before we spend weeks walking together.
Emma and I walked day three on our own. Around South Head and then along the sea cliffs to Bondi. A little foot sore perhaps, but all bodes well for the Camino. More photos below.
8 itchy feet 