November 14. Bordeaux France to Estella Spain. By Car.

We’re off now on the automobile portion of “planes, trains and automobiles” plus feets and boats.  This has been such a strange journey with so many modes of transportation.  And only 2 weeks left before we head home. We are on our way to Santiago to pick up Antonio to begin our Camino Finesterre and Muxia.

I took a lot of photos from the car window but will only show a few here.  And we did stop along the way.

The plan is to drive as closely as we can to the Camino Frances which starts in St Jean Pied de Port and which we walked in 2019.  So…back to St Jean we go…but not to see my kitty. I must let her go. 🐈

The view from the bedroom in Bordeaux.

We put Scott as main driver with Ken as secondary. I guess I will be navigator. Yuck, so much responsibility! I’ll never hear the end of it if we end up in Timbuktu.

On the freeway trucks can only drive in the right lane if there are two lanes, and in the two right lanes if there are three lanes. I like this system- controls the speed ofvthe trucks and improves safety.

We went back through the pepper town and of course the store was closed because everything closes for lunch between 12 and 200.  Can you imagine the tourist traps in Banff closing for a 2 hour lunch every day?  But we pulled onto a side road so I could take pictures of the pepper fields and the local farm had a vending machine with local products.

Plus there was a greenhouse where they were drying the peppers. The photo is not the best but the red stuff is the peppers.

So the blurry storks from yesterday’s bus ride are a little clearer today. There were six of them in the soccer field.

Scott wrote 19 postcards for friends and ran out of stamps, so we had to hit the post office in SJPDP as it’s the last one before the border and Scott wanted the scratch n sniff butter croissant stamps.  Seems the French post office also “mails” letters to Pere Noel at Christmas.

Mary Ann OG, these people take Christmas almost as seriously as you as i am seeing towns and houses being decorated for the last two weeks.  Heavy on the “almost” though!

There are two routes over the Pyrenees to Ronceveaux/Roncesvalles in Spain, which is the first stage of the Camino. Most people take the Napoleon route which is very steep but closed every year from November 1 to April 1. It’s not closed in that there is no gate, and we did see a pilgrim going that way as there is no snow yet  but the mountain pass is very unpredictable and once you are off the pavement halfway up it is easy to get lost. A few pilgrims have died that way.

We are driving the Valcarlos route, which is also very steep, but it remains open all year for pilgrims and is not as high in elevation.

All of a sudden we are pulled over by Spanish border control, which we weren’t expecting  as you pass freely through the Eurozone countries. But they just logged in our passports and sent us on our way.

I think the sign means you have to let the big bad bus go first, Scott.

This is where the Valcarlos and Napoleon routes meet up (unless you take the steep short cut through the woods).

The monastery in Roncevalles (where the Spaniards believe the Camino actually starts) which house almost 400 pilgrims. It was completely full when Ken and I walked in 2019 but we had a reservation so no issues.

One of the most photographed signs on the Camino. Too bad it gets so defamed with stickers. People have to clean it every year but there are still jerks who have to show they were there even though no one else cares. Not very pilgrim like in my opinion  – its disrespectful.

In Spain, these pillars mark the way, along with ubiquitous yellow painted arrows, the yellow shell on blue tiles  and brass shells embedded in the streets. This route is so well marked you don’t need a map, guide or GPS tracks…just follow the yellow marked road.

There was a wide-eyed horse in the back of the trailer. He looked very scared.

Blurry photo to the entrance of a Camino section Ken called “Mirkwood” as it was dark and scary. I had to hold his hand. It’s amazing that these places are so embedded in our minds from a walk we did in 2019 that we recognize them driving past at 80 km/hr six years later. I’m also grateful that it was a shared experience with Ken as we both recognized it at the same time.

Still in Basque country, judging by the architecture.

The view from our window in Estella.

The stores are open untol 800 or 900 here, not 700 like in Spain.

I love how these towns come alive at night, although an hour later the square was empty as it began to rain very hard.

Scott did a phenomenal job of driving in Estella as it was getting dark, especially as our place was on a narrow street (on the Camino actually) with no parking, which also meant driving around until we found a parking spot in a very full free overnight parking lot on a busy Friday night.