Finally

Leaving the station ticket machine with a plethora of train tickets stuffed into our hands we headed for a nearby café for a calming cup of tea and obligatory croissants. I say ‘obligatory’ as I’m not really a breakfast person and rarely eat anything until late morning, sometimes even lunchtime. However, when on holiday I do like to sit down to a good brekkie. I’m not sure if a 4-month sabbatical actually constitutes a holiday but I’m re-defining it, so it does.

The rest of Saturday saw us taking 3 trains: the first from Montélimar (famous for the nougat as I now know) to Avignon (famous for the bridge), via Orange (famous for their UNESCO site Roman Amphitheatre). We changed at Avignon for a train to Narbonne (via Sète and Beziers) where the scenery quickly changed, the temperature slowly increased and we really began to feel like we were in the South of France; bit of a ‘going on a summer holiday’ vibe. A change at Narbonne took us to Toulouse for an overnight stay.

Heading to bed early on Saturday night, it wasn’t long before we were rudely awoken with the sound of revelling and car horns blaring out, just on the main road outside our hotel window. We were pretty centrally located in Toulouse, just opposite the main train station, and had opened the window since the weather was lovely and mild. The ruckus carried on for a further hour or so as I drifted back to sleep. I assumed at the time that there was a big wedding being celebrated or some other event I was blissfully unaware of. It was only when we arrived to catch our train the following morning and were greeted at the station with a heaving mass, walking in the opposite direction, of purple-clad football supporters getting off the train from Paris, that we realised Toulouse had won the French Cup (equivalent to the FA Cup) the night before. Most of the revellers looked desperately in need of a little lie down; they were noisy, singing loudly, in very high spirits, but polite and friendly, although you could have cut the alcohol-filled aroma surrounding them with a knife.

We enjoyed a relaxing event-free 3½ hour train journey from Toulouse to Bayonne on Sunday morning passing through beautiful French countryside and rolling green hills. As we travelled via Tarbes, Lourdes and Pau, the closer we got to Bayonne the more mountainous the terrain became, and I have to admit to feeling increasingly excited as we spotted the Pyrenees in the distance for the first time. We’d soon be climbing up and over those mountains into Spain.

At Bayonne we had an hour before our next (and final) connection to St Jean Pied de Port. About 35 minutes of this was spent just waiting to be served a hot drink in a busy local café. During our wait we did notice one thing. Every other person we now saw around Bayonne train station was suitably dressed in walking gear and kitted out with a large backpack and walking poles. We had expected to see other walkers on the train from Toulouse but didn't spot anyone obvious. Later conversations with fellow travellers led us to conclude that most had travelled via Paris (our original plan that never came to fruition due to non-availability of tickets) and not cross-country from the East to the South-West of France as we had.

The hour's train journey from Bayonne to St Jean Pied de Port was an experience. Almost without exception each person taking the meandering slow train (with plenty of stops) was on-board in order to reach their Camino walking start point. We were instantly exported into a buzzing international environment, each carriage filled to the brim with walkers from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil, the United States, Canada, the UK, Poland, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and everywhere in between. Many were travelling solo (I admired them!) and others in pairs or small groups. The sense of anticipation and excitement was palpable and everyone seemed keen to engage, interact and chat with their fellow-passengers. That said, a quiet calm fell over the carriage we were in around half-way through the journey. I'm not sure why; maybe they were feeling weary, given that some had travelled so far already, or maybe, like me, seeing the ever-growing Pyrenees in the distance provoked a sense of doubt and anxiousness that was hard to shake off.

Around mid-afternoon on Sunday we arrived. We'd made it in time, albeit a day late. We could start walking tomorrow as planned and I finally relaxed and breathed a very large sigh of relief. Reflecting over the past couple of days I realised that what had started out as a stressful situation two days beforehand, with firm plans tossed into the air and having to be changed at the last minute, was really the start of our adventure. I suspect there will be a lot of things that don’t quite go our way, or as planned, over the next few weeks so maybe this was possibly a little early training for us?