PILGRIMAGE (III) - CHEATING ON THE FIRST DAY

A good place to start, if you didn’t have time to begin as far away as Le Puy or Vézelay in central France, was St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, on the French side of the Pyrenees. You walk on the first day over the mountains, crossing the frontier into Spain, and spend the first night at the monastery in a place of great historic and literary resonance, Roncesvalles (great website, worth exploring).

I knew St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, having visited there while on a seaside camping holiday at St-Jean-de-Luz. A pretty, familiar town, it felt like an easy place to start. It is the hardest place to start. Day one, on unaccustomed legs, with an unaccustomed back-pack, right over the Pyrenees, with nowhere to stop until you reach the other side.

The road begins to climb right outside the town, and the scenery is glorious: rocky peaks, lush mountain grass and clean air. It’s hard walking. Hours and hours, with still no sight of the summit and the pass into Spain. Painful breath and heavy legs. Oh god, I wasn’t going to make this – all a terrible mistake!

I was sitting on the roadside when up drew a shepherd and his dog in what had once been a car. It still went, with a bump and clang, but now had no doors. Did I want a lift to the pass - it was all downhill from there? I did. This was 'not allowed' of course, the whole point being to do it on your own two feet. But it was that or giving up on the first day. No one saw me hop in and hang on tight, or scramble out again a few minutes later and squint upwards as he pointed out a clump of trees and rocks: "that’s the frontier; then it’s all down hill through the forest".

It was all down hill then, indeed, a long and mysterious walk through the oak forests to Roncesvalles - the fear of not making it to the summit replaced by the fear of getting lost among the ghosts of Roland and his army.

Towards a stream that flowed amid that land
Sones fell Gue into perdition black
All his sinews were strained until they snapped
And all the limbs were from his body dragged
On the green grass his clear blood gushed and ran

(Read the Chanson de Roland in the original Old French, and in English translation – and another translation. I’m sure there are versions now that read better to modern ears, but not on line).

The first sight of the monastery’s outline in the early evening – oh! And then the shock: unisex dormitories. Large and cramped, with large, sweaty bodies, and some of these guys could snore for, well, for wherever they were from. I slept. It was fine. As much a rite of passage as reaching the mountain pass.

In retrospect, I don’t think it was cheating to take that lift on the first day – the only one I took. I wasn’t going to make it, if he hadn’t come along. The Spanish bank-manager told me later how he’d been laid up for a day with a bad knee, and then taken a lift for 20 miles to catch up with his new friend the Dutch psychiatrist, so they could continue the walk together. I don’t think that, done for love, was cheating either.

Photos of the Pyrenees by Maureen Measure and of Roncesvalles by Michael Krier, UK Confraternity of St James.

More to come, but not one post for every day of the walk...

Comments

[leslee]

Well, what would be a pilgrimage without an angel swinging in for assistance?

[Lucy]

About 25 years ago, a friend and I embarked on a sort of hitch hiking pilgrimage, aiming to get to Spain, ideally Barcelona ultimately and on the tracks of Orwell and Hemingway. I knew nothing of the Camino at that time and had no knowledge or interest in the religious or spiritual, our visions were literary and political only, and very vague at that. We ran out of steam and time, and bottle for me since I had no Spanish. We ended up camping in a very pleasant field with a stream for a week or so just outside St Jean-Pied-de-Port, and decided to walk to Roncevalles from there. As you found, it was a lot harder than it looked on the map! But lifts appeared ou of nowhere, a handsome Spanish man who I couldn't communicate with at all, and on the way back a French couple with a boot full of undeclared brandy, I think they picked us up in case they were stopped and they could say some if it was ours. We drank a duralex glass of wine at the monastery and turned round and came back again.
But St Jean was certainly a pretty, friendly spot!

[zhoen]

A woman's just got to know her limitations.

[Pica]

Jean, this account is wonderful, more please!

[udge]

We started in St. Jean-Pied-de-Port too, and yes it is a hellish climb. The guides said that one or two people die on that hill every year, from over-exertion and unpreparedness -- and the stubborn refusal not to cheat.

[dave]

We saw the one and only Lammergeier of our trip at the top of the pass. It flew right overhead while we stood in front of the ridicuous monument to Roland.