Day 16
Etsaut to Col du Somport
30,479 steps, 14.1 miles. Actually more like 15 km
A high day in every sense of the word. Although it started with 3 of us waiting at the Etsaut bus station for a scheduled 7:48 am Sundaybus that never came. At 8 we decided to walk. Urs soon passed us by. We walked on the road because of a reported landslide that blocked the trail between Etsaut/Borce and Urdos—never verified. Nearly 2 hours later we arrived in Urdos, having walked past the amazing Fort Portalet high on the cliffs above us. We found a boulangerie/patisserie in Urdos,one of the liveliest, most prosperous-appearing villages we’d seen. We took a road rather than the camino trail, as it looked considerably shorter, and the road had been OK so far. We were told that the trucks would not be on the roads on Sunday.
Eventually, we came to the spot where the camino and GR 653 joined the road, and this time when the trail met the road again, we took the trail. The road was just too dull and mind-numbing, and also rewuiredconstant awareness of vehicles, which roared past at high speeds with great noise.
The trail climbed steadily through beautiful mature beech forests. There were many waterfalls, some of which tossed the trail, and made for rather precarious footing.
At times we could view the road winding far below. At about halfway along this stretch of trail Urs appeared behind us, amazed that we were ahead of him. He said we’d missed “the swamp” on the trail he’d taken, which had obviously been much longer than the road.
He was soon ahead of us again—the last we saw him. We picnicked in a sunny spot with Mountain View’s, and continued climbing, the forest gradually giving way to almost alpine meadows. Climbing up a long steep meadow with old stone corrals, we Cameron the road again. It was getting chilly, and snow lay in patches around us.
We debated as we sat on a stone wall lining the road. I wanted to take the trail, but Kent booted for the road. We would have had to cross snow on the trail, which went down and then up. We were both pretty tired, having climbed steadily for 5 hours already.
I followedKent on the road, and then, we turned onto the trail again, where we did have to walk through old snow -/ not easy as our feet sunk into the rusty stuff.
All along the way the views were incredible. We were finally among and even above the mountains we’d been walking toward for days.
At last, we came to the top of the pass! A restaurant and the Albergue Aysa were open!
Lovely place. We cleaned up and napped, and before dinner went out to watch the most amazing sunset over mountains in all directions.
It had been an incredible day of great beauty, and the high point of our trip.
We celebrated with dinner and a bottle of local white wine. We had crossed from France into Spain just across the road from the albergue. Suddenly the language was Spanish. Au revoir to La Belle France and Bienvenidos a Espana!
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