Vitalie Ciobanu

Data Analyst as a Service

Tag: Camino de Santiago

  • Stage 2. Roncesvalles – Llarasoaña

    Stage 2. Roncesvalles – Llarasoaña

    Well, this day was much nicer than the previous one. Much more wild and beautiful.

    Roncesvalles

    Straight from the start we enter a nice path through a forest. It’s kind of short but energizing to start the day with.

    Overall, the entire day passed through nice areas, with many nice views and trails. It was mostly going down today, not lots of uphill some short and steep parts but very manageable. I’ve enjoyed today’s walk.

    We planned to finish in Zubiri, after about 22km. But we reached this city relatively quickly, by lunch time, and since there was no stores or much things to do here, we decided to go to the next bigger city after lunch, Larrasoaña.

    We had lunch in a bar-restaurant. They ran out of falafel the day before so all they could offer was some salad, potato chips, olives and a big sandwich with avocado and tomato. Not a lot but ok to replenish the energy for 5 more km.

    After having lunch we entered a small shop and bought almond milk and biscuits for tomorrow’s breakfast and chickpeas for tonight’s dinner then we moved on.

    We stopped at Pension San Nicolas, a private one, because we wanted to do the laundry and cook. Here we were told they can make us something for dinner and picnic as breakfast as well.

    Laundry: 4 euros. Dryer: 3 euros.

    Other than this, the pension is nice, clean, and bit cold. There is a fully functional kitchen, although no accessories (towels, paper etc). The hosts are nice!

    The boots hace to be left outside. Under a roof, but outside. So in the morning I expect them to be almost frozen 🙂

    Roncesvalles
    Distance to Santiago de Compostela
    Tomorrow’s plan, short route

  • Stage 1. Saint Jean Pied de Port – Roncesvalles

    Stage 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 🤦🏻‍♂️

    Start of the St. James Way
    Nice house 🙂
    Some drawings on an old building
    Pilgrim monument
    Another monument to pilgrims
    Today’s track and elevation
    Mostly all day like this
    And this, less cars though
    And this
    The first forest trail
    A nice bridge crossing the river
    The last hundred meters of uphill
    A panorama from the highest point of the route
    Map and distance left from here to Santiago
    Soup make in progress
    Our vegan lunch today

  • Stage 0. Pamplona – Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port

    Stage 0. Pamplona – Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port

    Well, the time has come. My heart soul and I decided to spend another week of the Camino de Santiago. However this time, starting from the beginning of the French Way, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France.

    We took the train from Barcelona to Pamplona on Friday evening and arrived at about 10pm at the hostel Albergue Plaza Catedral. I will not add many details about this part of trip because nothing much happened. Nice place overall but, geez! Those beds would really need some WD-40 lubricant. All beds! Other than that, the eating area is kind of small for the amount of people that are checked in and could use it.

    Anyway, let’s go to today’s trip. Since it’s still considered “winter” by someone here, there is no direct bus from Pamplona to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (this year the bus service starts in March 25), so we had to take one bus from Pamplona to San Sebastián (1h 15min trip); from there another bus to Bayonne, France (1h 30min aprox) and from there a train to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (1h).

    The thing is, we got off the first bus one stop earlier by mistake and had to take a local bus to get to our next destination. This local bus had 50+ stops and took 1h+ to reach our needed destination. obviously we missed the train 🙂 and the next one was 4 hours later 😅 so we had the take away lunch besides sitting on some stairs besides the river with some nice views. We then did some walking around the city and had an incredibly good vegan ice cream from an Italian ice cream shop.

    At 7:20pm we arrived to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. We went to the pilgrims office to get the pilgrim passport and then to the hostel – Gite Bidean. A very-very cozy place with amazing people, Joe and Pascal. In this specific location, there is no kitchen for everyone’s use, but they can prepare something on request. Since we’re vegans, we had an instant onion soup with some boiled lentils from the supermarket. Afterwards we have a somewhat long but very pleasant discussion with the Pascal, the owner. I enjoyed the conversation a lot and it reminded me about our previous trip when we also encountered very nice owners in almost every hostel.

    It was a long day due the bus issue but it was a nice day spent together. Can’t wait to start the journey tomorrow! We’ll not do the “Napoleon” route because it is closed due to bad weather, so I hope the “backup” route will be nice as well even though it has lots of asphalt roads.

    Walking through San Sebastián
    Train station in Bayonne
    My bag. For real, no BS. Less than 15% of my weight. They said 15 is ideal. 20 is the max!
    Getting the first stamp at the pilgrims’ office
    The onion soup
    Total number of people by nationality who passed through the pilgrims office in 2023
    Total number of people passing through the same pilgrims office by years
    Our route from today
    “Normal” route from Pamplona to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port if there is a direct bus connection.

    Featured image by Jon Tyson (@jontyson) on https://unsplash.com/

  • Day 4. Fisterra – Cape Fisterra – Fisterra

    Day 4. Fisterra – Cape Fisterra – Fisterra

  • Day 4. Corcubión – Fisterra

    Day 4. Corcubión – Fisterra

  • Day 3. Dumbría – Corcubión

    Day 3. Dumbría – Corcubión

  • Day 2. Negreira – Dumbría

    Day 2. Negreira – Dumbría

  • Day 1. Santiago de Compostela – Negreira

    Day 1. Santiago de Compostela – Negreira
    • Distance: 22.1 km
    • Moving time: 5:00
    • Elapsed time: 5:40
    • Avg moving speed: 4.4 km/h
    • Total ascent: 521 m
    • Total descent: 603 m
    • Min elevation: 66 m
    • Max elevation: 293 m
    • With: Lucia
    Santiago
    Santiago
    Negreira