Day 1. Saint Jean Pied de Port – Roncesvalles

First day of the walk. As mentioned in the previous post, today was about the “backup” route, or winter route. Veeeerryyy boring, long distances on asphalt and sharing the road with cars. The entire distance is mostly going up, with the last kilometers having a steeper incline. Only the last 1.5 km is all going down 🙂

So, today, exactly 15km of asphalt before entering the first trail. 1km+ of beautiful forest trail that ends in the same road with cars. Luckily today was Sunday and there were no trucks.

Afterwards, shortly after passing the 18th km, we enter an amazing forest with beautiful views, trails, river bridges, small cascades with mostly positive, steep, elevation until the 22nd km, where we get off the forest for few hundred meters to enter another trail. Warning, the water from the spring that you can find here is not treated. Meaning you can drink it, but it’s on your own risk.

From here, we’re following the same trail, that peaks at 1050m, until the hostel in Roncesvalles.

The hostel is nice and looked after by volunteers. The kitchen is well equipped. Lots of tables to eat and space to prepare something to eat and then wash everything. We didn’t go to look for lunch options, since there are only 3 places nearby so vegan options are quite limited.

After about 7km there is a commercial area with few stores, including a supermarket. The prices are very low because the store is treated as duty free, since it’s at the border between France and Spain.

We got a can of beans, a can of artichokes and some cooked rice. With the half of the onion soup left from yesterday, we made a quick soup to which we added the beans and the rice. It ended up being more solid dish that we enjoyed a lot.

For dinner went to Hotel Roncesvalles to see what vegan options they have. They were kind enough to make us a quinoa dish with vegetables out of the menu. With a vegetable soup as a starter, it wasn’t that bad. 2 vegetable dishes 🤦🏻‍♂️