Category: Getting to the start

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The final transit leg to the start of the Camino Francés

Bayonne to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (‘Saint John at the foot of the mountain pass’). The train leaves later this morning; takes about an hour. Good weather up there today – this forecast from yr.no:

Early afternoon …

Wonderful trip up into the Pyrenean foothills, for much of the way alongside a river and through farmland.

What’s the collective noun for a train load of disembarking peregrinos (pilgrims)? A disembarkment?

Seems the town name is hyphenated. Must fix in all my posts.

In and around the township (the old town is walled):

Cathedral count so far (Gothic or otherwise): 0 (not including Bayonne; expect count to increase over coming months)
Splendid bucolic scenes: 47+ (gave up counting soon after leaving Bayonne)
Peregrinos on the train: maybe 50 (all strangely quiet)

A queue at the pilgrim information centre (where you get your pilgrim passport) …

… but patience paid off and I got in later during a lull.

The albergue where I’m staying for a couple of nights opened at 2:30. Josef the owner explained the house rules, the most important of which is the communal dinner at 7:30 and a close second being the hours of silence. Nice place (will post some photos tomorrow) and the communal dinner will be an opportunity to meet some people.

The ‘family’ who stayed the night at the albergue.

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By train to Bayonne

So I’m leaving Paris and the day dawns clear and sunny, albeit brisk. You wouldn’t read about it.

8 am on a Sunday morning and not many people on the Metro.

It’s a 20-minute ride across to Gare Montparnasse, from where my Bayonne train will depart. The platforms haven’t been assigned to all trains yet so waiting travellers gather expectantly in front of the departures board until the numbers come up and then hurriedly migrate en masse to the platforms.

I prebooked a seat before leaving Melbourne. I didn’t prebook the large man with blocked nasal passages who sat opposite me and alternately snorted, snuffled and snored for the duration of the trip.

Bayonne is around five hours from Paris. (The train to St Jean Pied de Port leaves from Bayonne. I’ll catch it tomorrow.) A really enjoyable journey through the French countryside: flat and sometimes gently undulating agricultural land, field after field of brilliant yellow canola crops separated by green pasture, scattered cotton-wool clouds, stands of dense thin-trunked trees with delicate green foliage, clusters of old farm buildings here and there, every so often a small village, vines around Bordeaux (not unexpectedly), extensive pine plantations beyond.

I noticed heavy snow on the mountains in the distance to the east as we neared Bayonne. I have an idea they might be part of the Pyrenees and wonder, if they are, whether there’ll be snow where I’m walking the first week or two. Maybe my thermals will get a workout after all. I’ll wait until I get to St Jean Pied de Port to find out more about conditions.

Bayonne station is pretty.

As is the town.