Day Four - Hobbling even worse - 8k

I made it to Pamplona but I must have looked like a proper pilgrim with my washing attached to my rucksack, walking in the wrong direction from Arre for over a kilometre didn’t help matters, learning to ask when I need help is another of my issues being highlighted constantly. I don’t like towns at home so foreign towns just seem to be slightly more annoying in that none of the people speak your language and they’re definitely less helpful than country folk. Just stopped long enough to buy pastries and kept on moving. Stopped off at the Navarra University to ensure I have my daily stamp, shambling through the campus grounds to the bemused looks of the students. Running out of town and away from all the noise although my run is actually limited to a slow n painful shuffle. Determined to make distance and yet unable to walk a step without chronic pain in my knees and shins and hips. Making a pathetic sight I make my way to Cizur Menor and the famous private refuge in the home of the Roncal Family. It’s shut as usual, really starting to hate my guide book or maybe it’s the fact that I’m early everywhere because I can’t sleep and start out before dawn in some cases and it isn’t April yet, more things will be open and earlier in April someone tells me, great.

Meet a couple of girls from Australia and an American lad who start to tell me about the misadventures of a dead pilgrim on the mountain and two Dutch girls who camped up there. Obviously I’m in shock to hear that the two girls I met only three days ago have gone through so much and feeling guilty because I hadn’t noticed their absence at Roncesvalles, could I have done something to raise the alarm? Was I so caught up in my own relief and sense of achievement at crossing from France to Spain that I hadn’t thought aboout why they hadn’t made it to Roncesvalles like we all had? They’d been so fit and talked of mountaineering, perhaps I’d assumed that they’d gone on to the next place? I don’t think they even crossed my mind, maybe they should have. I felt bad for a couple of days about that. Managed to sit still most of the evening and rest, sightseeing is out of the question, even managed to resist the temptation to go get Tapas in Pamplona with the two Oz girls and the American guy.