Somport Pass/Aragon Route early May 2001

[Donald Schell]

Dear friends,

This list was very helpful as I planned my wife's small introduction to the
pilgrimage this May.  I'd like to share some account that very happy
experience here.  Most simply, it may be useful to others to know of new
albergues that didn't appear in our (or others') guidebooks.   Beyond that
I'm very glad for the experience of crossing Somport Pass and walking
through Aragon and offer it to others who have already walked through
Roncesvalles.   I'll break the telling of this into a couple of notes over
the next few days.

Likenesses and differences of Somport and the Aragon Route to the more
traveled route made it very appealing.   I suppose what struck me most
powerfully about that route is that we met such a smaller number of fellow
pilgrims than I'd experienced from Roncesvalles on the previous time walking
and so we got to know those we met better.  My impression is that MOST of
the pilgrims we met had begun much farther back in France than we had -
Arles, Montpellier, and so on.   Until we joined the other route in Puenta
La Reina, I had guessed that difference was seasonal - May vs. July, but the
numbers of people and the numbers who'd begun only a few days back as we
came into Navarra was similar to what I'd experienced the first time
walking.

My first time on the Camino in 1998 I walked with my daughter Maria who
graduated from college that year.  We began at St. Jean Pied de Port, walked
over the pass to Roncesvalles and on as far as Logronyo.  From Logronyo we
took a bus through Burgos to Leon and and continued walking from Leon to
Santiago, about 300 miles in all and about three weeks walking.

May 8th this year, Ellen and I began at Urdos in France and walked up over
Somport Pass and on to Estella.  Ellen began uncertain about the extended
walking but found her way to the richness of the experience quickly.   I'm
54 and Ellen is 49.  Both of us are physically active and we did no special
training for the Camino.   We probably could have eliminated her anxiety
with a couple of days of practice walking at home in San Francisco.  She was
sad that calendar and plans meant we had to stop, and I am quite delighted
to report that we plan to return to Estella next year or as soon as we can
after and walk on from through to Santiago including the plains that Maria
and I skipped in 1998.

Our stops this time were Canfranc Estacion, Jaca, Arres, Ruesta, Sanguesa,
Monreal, Puenta la Reina, and Estella.  We made discoveries (and some appear
in that list) of refugios that were not in our guidebook.  This note and
what follows will detail those discoveries.

We left Paris on the night of May 7th by overnight train, arriving in Pau at
7:30 a.m. on May 8th.   From Pau we planned to continue on by train to
Oloron Ste. Marie and by bus up to Urdos.  Getting ourselves breakfast in
the train station in Pau we just missed the local train to Oloron and had to
catch the next train, about an hour and half later.  We could easily have
avoided this and caught the earlier train from Pau by a little grocery
shopping in Paris the day before.

The next train and bus got us started in Urdos at about 10:30 a.m.  With
clouds gathering overhead and the threat of storm, we were concerned at what
it would be if the storm broke on us.  About forty-five minutes out or
Urdos, we left the highway for a well-marked Camino and deep quiet climbing
through the forest.   We were finding the pace that fit the two of us
walking together.  It hadn't occurred to me that walking companions shape a
consensus in pacing, breaks, side by side or in line, talking or not, how to
make choices of routes, etc.  Ellen and I have been married twenty-six years
and have done day hikes together, biked together, etc. over the years.
Pilgrim pace, walking all day for a series of days is somehow different.  I
don't think I would have noticed this except that hat, pack, walking stick
and the Camino itself evoked such strong physical memories of walking with
Maria.  So Ellen and I spent the first couple of days creating something
new, the way we would walk together.  Of course, that 'way' also changed
over days with experience and increased physical comfort.  I'd remembered
that with Maria as well, but that discovery and development was also
different.

Not long after we left the highway we began seeing patches of snow near the
trail.  The jagged peaks ahead and across the valley were completely covered
with snow.  We wondered what we'd find ahead.  By the time we reached the
first pilgrim ruins we were crunching our way on crusted snow that covered
everything to a depth of four to six inches.  Occasionally we'd find step in
a hidden hollow and break through.  There were a few places where the snow
was deeper.  Sometimes it was slow going.  It was also glorious.

Where the path emerges again at the road we had some difficulty finding
where the camino continued because there was a broad road-building scar that
had obliterated several hundred yards of marked path.  We didn't want to
return to the road and it took us a half hour or so to find a probable path
and finally a camino marker.

When we reached the summit we found Somport's restaurant and border check
closed and quite deserted.  One published guide said there was an albergue
in the ski resort just over the summit.  The storm was getting more
threatening and we thought of stopping.  Despite the signs into the
settlement we didn't find the albergue (or anyone).   The whole settlement -
tall condos, a post office, bars, restaurants and ski shops was closed up
tight.  We had to continue.  The descent on the Spanish side was quick.
Soon there was more bare earth than snow, and then almost no snow.  When the
storm hit we were very grateful for our windbreakers and rain gear (long
ponchos and rain gaiters).  It was cold, but staying reasonably dry and
keeping warm by walking we had a good walk as it rained harder and harder.

Friends we made later on told of crossing over Somport a day behind us in a
much more serious storm that reduced visibility to simply the trail and
markers.  They didn't see the spiky majesty of the Pyrenees at all.  They'd
begun farther back in France than we did, reached Somport at dark and felt
glad to find someone at the ski resort below the summit who opened a room to
put them up but charged a good deal to do so.  (The albergue there must open
later in the season).

As we descended toward Canfranc, the the rain made steep muddy or stony
patches quite slick.  We picked our way carefully.  I slipped and fell once,
though not badly.  As slippery as it was on the steeper places, in rain and
gathering dark we were very glad not to be walking on the highway.  I
thought occasionally of our late start but brushed of regrets at missing the
train, reminding myself there was no point in imagining ourselves further on
or anywhere besides where we were.  We'd hoped to make Canfranc, but with
dark descending and the pouring rain, we stopped short at Canfranc Estacion.
It seemed wise.

Just into the little town of Canfranc Estacion a neon-sign greeted us:
"Albergue-Refugio Pepito Grillo.'"    I told Ellen that I had never seen a
refugio with a neon sign and wasn't sure what this would be.   In fact, it
wasn't a regular refugio and we began with our most expensive pilgrim night
of the trip.  Pepito Grillo serves in the winter as a dormitory-style ski
lodge.  When the snow goes, the owner rents his dormitory rooms to pilgrims
room by room as they arrive.  He explained to my wife and me that since he
had to rent us a room with eight beds, he'd rent it at half what he'd get
for eight people.  We were tired and glad for the room.  The room was warm
and pleasant after the storm and we enjoyed our own bath and shower.  We
braved the rain to find a good, simple dinner in one of the two bars that
was open.

We learned later that he offered the same deal on another room to the next
people to arrive, so we (and they) paid somewhat more than twice what we
would later come to expect to pay for an Albergue.

After our off-season night in the not-quite-albergue, we awoke the next
morning to the joys of the Aragon route.  With broken clouds in daylight
Canfranc Estacion revealed itself as a tiny settlement between forested
granite cliffs like those of Yosemite or the particularly sheer parts of the
Rockies.  Our way out of the mountains to Jaca followed the river gorge,
vertical cliffs rising high above the trail, and beside us falling the sheer
vertical bank of the river gorge falling a hundred feet to white water.
Along the way we crossed streams and saw frequent little waterfalls.  From
that day our entire walk was beautifully green and carpeted in wildflowers.
Throughout Aragon, we rarely saw more than two or three pilgrims in a day.
Our way was a lush blooming countryside, not at all arid and hard as we
heard it would be and as I imagine summer would make it.

Jaca greeted us with its forbidding military installation, a long concrete
wall topped with barbed wire and armed towers - like a heavily-guarded
penientiary but all the openings for guns pointed out.  Jaca was the point
where one conqueror after another from pre-Roman peoples, to Romans, Goths,
Moors, and Spaniards garrisoned and defended themselves against any army
that might venture crossing this key pass from Gaul/France.  Just past the
military walls and guard towers, we came to the edge of Jaca and as we
walked into the town people on the street engaged us in conversation, not
just passing greetings or Buen Viaje's, but conversation about where we'd
come from and walking over the pass and their experiences of walking.

We loved Jaca.  Close to the center, we passed the Cathedral with the
Diocesan museum that houses Romanesque frescoes saved from many of the
abandoned ermitas we would later see along the Camino.   We paused on our
way to the Albergue and went in, took our time with the frescoes and
returned to the museum entrance to find a very welcoming white-haired priest
minding our packs and the museum entrance, laughing, chatting, and
encouraging us and everyone to buy postcards of the frescoes.  He seemed
interested and pleased in a collegial way when I told him I was an Episcopal
priest.  When Ellen and I added that it was our 26th wedding anniversary, he
laid a hand on each of our heads and said a blessing.  We talked with him
about church and pilgrimage and prayer.  He sent us back into the Cathedral
with suggestions of specific things we should see, and then he directed us
on to the albergue, explaining that it was an old Pilgrims' Hospital (which
means in this instance new construction within part of the stone walls of
the medieval hospital).

In the dormitory room of the albergue we found a dozen or fourteen other
anxious pilgrims talking about the long, apparently albergue-less stretch to
Sanguesa.  My copy of the Guia Practica dates from 1998, so I didn't know if
more recent guides would have the more current information we learned though
with the variety of nationalities and guidebooks present. all the guidebooks
in all our various languages warned that there was virtually nowhere to stay
until Sanguesa, sixty kilometers from Jaca.   I wasn't sure what we'd do,
whether we'd need to stay in a hostal (and the guidebooks didn't suggest
there were many of those either).  A note in my Guia suggested asking locals
for shelter.  I left the conversation and went downstairs to ask the
hospitalero what people did beyond Jaca.  He was as helpful as I'd expected,
and gave us a little brochure that listed new albergues which I took back
upstairs to show the others.  We learned of Berdun on the north side of the
reservoir offered 16 hostal rooms at 2,800 pesetas and 9 albergue beds at
800 pesetas.   On the south side, Artieda had two beds at 700 pesetas),
Ruesta had 78 beds at 800 pesetas), and Undues de Lerda had 56 beds at 700
pesetas.  Lots of good news.

The hospitalero said that Arres, though not listed in the flyer, also had a
new albergue.  At about 3 kilometers beyond Puente la Reina de Jaca (on the
south side of the reservoir) it looked like the just-right destination.  He
did say it was very, very simple.  Had he told us the whole story of the
simplicity Arres, without seeing it, we probably would have made other
plans.  I'm glad went there.

I'll continue this tomorrow.

love,
donald