Day 2: Orisson to Roncesvalles

I will forever associate the sound of cowbells with the Pyrenees. I love the music of cows and horses and birds and flies and bees mixed with the cowbells. I would have done a Julie Andrews run down the mountain path except I was supported by two Gumby legs and a pair of hiking poles.

The day reached a striking 38 Celsius. Quite a temperature change from September 2013. Strangely, I found day two this year easier to do than day two in 2013. At the Pic D’Orisson, I was able to climb further up to pray at the Virgin, Vierge d’Orisson, a weathered statue of the Virgin holding the infant Jesus against a backdrop of sky and mountains.

Some things had changed. Human nature, for one. A random pissed off shepherd driving along the path with his dog, tried to run me and a cyclist off the road. He’d been hanging out with the Virgin and hitting on younger women. When rebuffed by a Californian girl, he got into his car and played pilgrim pin ball with me and the German bicigrino.

Temperatures and tempers only got hotter. I reached the magnificent peak, looked ahead to the steep descent, and texted family and friends that I’d arrived. Then the downhill … into the Valley of Thorns and petty marital disagreements. It was a quiet descent into hell. But it ended well at the monastary at Roncesvalles when Andrew handed back my wedding band that had mysteriously fallen forcefully from my finger onto the tarmac. Don’t know how that happened.

We scored basement accommodations for the night. The monastary was nearly at capacity … 272 pilgrims … so we got the basement bunks. At least it was somewhat cooler. I had to use the men’s toilets in the middle of the night … outside. Surprised a young Vancouverite named Ian on the other side of that crazy heavy door. Now we are bathroom buddies. (Just when you think, “Well I’ll never see him again,” he pops up at every stop.

Dinner was a healthy serving of fish, followed by a beautiful pilgrims’s mass in the church. The benediction was read to pilgrims in their various languages … including Korean with a Spanish accent. Heavenly.