Day 35 Larceveau to St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port

Last day of this chemin/camino/walk and a very nice one! We got away early because the forecast was for a very hot day (37 or 39C), leaving the farm we stayed at just after 7:30am. The Canadian couple that we have been seeing at many of our stops were at the same place last night (as they were the night before) and we had a very nice dinner together again but the flies were a bit much, both at dinner and breakfast! Our guide book is a fair bit worse for wear and tear having been used as a flyswat yesterday afternoon!

We thought we’d spend the day walking with Sonia and Peter but Peter had to sort out his feet after we were dropped off back at the trail (actually a couple of km up the trail from Larceveau😀) so we walked into St.-Jean by ourselves which was nice. We have been surprised at the solitude of the trail – we expected it would pick up as we got closer to St.-Jean but it’s probably been the opposite – we only saw two other walkers and then only as we were leaving our morning coffee.

The walk today was mostly flat through very rural villages (sometimes a bit too rural – the farmers obviously use the trail to move animals from paddock to paddock, resulting in fairly shitty roads!), very pleasant and cool st first and then getting hotter as the morning wore on.

We stopped for a coffee at St.-Jean- le-Vieux, just under 4km from our destination, at about 10am and then walked the final stage into St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port feeling very pleased with ourselves, particularly Alison since she had literally limped into Santiago and then Muxía but had a spring in her step walking into St.-Jean.

St.-Jean is a sneaky place to walk into – it is hidden from view until you are within 100m of the walls, so all of a sudden our walk was over! Like Santiago, it is full of people who haven’t shared our experience so it is both exciting and deflating to get to both places!

Anyway, we had a great lunch next to our hotel and then checked in – very excited to have an air-conditioned room (maybe the fourth or fifth room to have it) because by the time we’d finished lunch it was very hot🤯.

Al was too excited to sleep, so we had a look around the town and bought a guide to the Portuguese Camino!

We’ve started cleaning and sorting out our hiking gear and have a booking just down the road at a nice restaurant for dinner to celebrate!

16km today making it 738km in total (including the 20km in the kayak 🚣‍♂️) – I think we’ll sleep well tonight!

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