Day 30: Navarrenx to Aroue-Ithorrots-Olhaiby
- Simon Pollack
- May 26, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 1, 2024
The jaunty red / white properties belie a trend I see
Of slightly offish company: the Basque are hard to read
Do they not like strangers all a-pounding on their dirt?
Or are they fine with foreigners, their tone just merely curt?
26 May 2024, Sunday
Distance hiked 20.4km (12.7m) | Ascent 486m |
I had been reflecting on Roncevaux for a few days. Whether to cross the Pyrenean pass from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to the first stop of the Spanish Camino, known there as Roncesvalles. It’s the toughest leg of the whole 1,500km from Le Puy to Santiago. This morning, I resolved to do it. My knee had held up well in all weathers since I’d started looking after it better in Nogaro. Nok had sorted out my feet. I’m enjoying climbs and managing descents well. I am feeling super fit, as fit as I’ve felt in 15 or more years. And I have the time to do it, having booked two nights in St Jean.
Off I set and as I left the town, by happy coincidence, I bumped into Vincent and Marie-Pierre. I spent the whole day walking with them, which after two days of more solitary stuff brought the balance back nicely to equilibrium. They were perfect company, and being more naturally active than me (but my having had four weeks of working up to this degree of speed and vigour) we found ourselves in perfect sync of speed and rest stops. The conversation flowed naturally and the hours passed without noticing it. After a few days of beautiful walks this one seemed less enamouring, and the company was welcome to divert from it. We have left what I would consider to be French France and the region is now decidedly Basque. They have a nice consistency in the themes of their housing stock, mostly whitewashed with the same russet-red shutters and woodwork. But somehow it seems shabbier, more unfriendly. Perhaps the encounter with the dog non-lover yesterday soured me, or perhaps he represented the true character of this region.
Farms seem unkind and functional, with barking dogs threatening to bite, as opposed to bucolic and pretty. Houses, except when we reach the well-tended outskirts of St Jean Pied de Port later, seem slightly more run down. People seem to avert their eyes and nobody drops a kind word. On this day we passed a village holding some kind of fete, and I learned later Richard and Cathy tried to have a look but were told they weren’t welcome, it was villagers only. I’m also jaded perhaps by an experience from five years ago when I stayed in a Basque chambre d’hôtes three days outside of St Jean, where the family, while feeding me generously, didn’t engage at all with me and spoke exclusively Basque among themselves. Of course, the Basques have a long history of focusing on themselves at the exclusion of outsiders, with a 60 year separatist movement supported by violence. Happily that’s over, but they still don’t seem welcoming to me.
My friendship with the Franco-Swiss couple deepened further when, in light of this being Sunday and my having failed to collect anything from the only open shop on the day’s walk (a boulangerie in Navarrenx), they generously shared their picnic lunch with me at midday.
And so we rolled up to Ferme Bohoteguia, where we were all staying, in the middle of the afternoon. I’d stayed here before and given the meter of the natural stops on the walk this and a “gîte communal” are the only options at this point, two days short of St Jean. I failed to book half a year in advance and so I was in a dormitory room of four beds. All washing and toilet facilities are shared and the thing, while very clean with a friendly welcome, is functional bordering on industrial. I can’t criticise it at all, being as good as it can be really for what it is, but I just wish there were a charming chambres d’hôtes or two around here. Oh, sorry, this is Basque country and they aren’t that charming to people travelling through their region…
There are two private rooms, and Vincent and Marie-Pierre got one of them (she’s very good at advance-booking) and, guess what, Richard and Cathy are in the other. Dominique is here again, as are a few others I recognise: it’s quite the gathering, being both large and one of limited accommodation options.
A great thing about this place is they supply some basic grocery stuff, so I was able to pick up some provisions for lunch tomorrow, and with some people I’d grown friendly with I was able to while the few hours to bed time with booze and banter. Vincent thought it was hilarious that I was a reluctant dormitory-dweller, telling my room mates that I snored a great deal when drunk while ostentatiously plying me with alcohol. Richard knocked back the beers like an Aussie rugby player – oh, wait, he is an Aussie rugby player. Cathy showed a lower leg bruise to Marie-Pierre, one nurse to another (but this was Marie’s speciality as it related to fluid passage in the body) and got some good advice. And time whiled away while the friendly hostess, Simone, organised laundry (for free) for everyone in the gîte.
I ended up sleeping fine and set off the next morning at 8am for the penultimate hike before St Jean Pied de Port.
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