| Distance | 18 km |
| Time | 5hrs 30 mins |
| Difficulty | 1,200m of climbing, fairly easy |
| Good for | Visibility poor, but good views |
Day 3 saw our first casualty in Luca – his blisters had got the better of him so took the day off. We left him to look around the ‘alpine-esque’ town and get a taxi to our next overnight stop. This was different to the end of the days walk as Urkiaga Pass is basically in the middle of nowhere so Jason had pre-ordered a taxi to pick us up. We just had to get there at the allotted time!
Another overcast day lay ahead of us. For it being the end of June, we hadn’t seen the sun once and the temperature was in the late teen’s and early twenties celsius. That was probably a bit of a blessing, even if it meant we weren’t able to see the views that were in the guidebook.
This picture was taken early on in day 3 and is similar to many of the other ‘view’ ones – plenty of rolling hills and plenty of greenery. Pleasant.
By now, the continuous low cloud over the preceding days had clearly left plenty of moisture on the paths. This looks like a stream, but was actually the path we had to climb. It was hard to keep your feet dry as we still had about 4 hours of walking ahead of us.
Today what felt like some chunkier climbs than had been on prior days. Today would also mark the first day of hitting 1000m altitude. As with previous days though, we kept hitting the cloud line which made visibility poorer and the temperature cooler.
Well, we’re still on track! Here’s Jason gathering his thoughts and breath…
Having touched the French border the prior day, we had another opportunity to see France again. The guide book mentions border stone 127 specifically and notes that it is one of about 600 along the border which had been placed there in 1860 after the border was properly settled in the 1856 Treaty of Limits.
Beyond the first 10 yards and a horse, there wasn’t much of France visible!
Upwards we went up a particularly steep climb which was made harder by the lack of visibility so we really had no idea how much more climbing we had to do. Moods were raised by an impromptu rendition of The Spirit of Radio by Rush by Jason and I – anyone in earshot must have thought an animal was being slaughtered. We did manage a ‘team photo’, not that I can remember where it was taken!
We reached the summit around 15km in to the walk. The path descended into some woods before we hit the Urkiaga pass where our taxi was waiting to take us to a local town called Zubiri.
Zubiri was known for being on the Camino Frances which is the pilgrims path to Santiago de Compostela so it was busy compared to the empty paths we had encountered thus far. We settled in to a local bar for the night and watched the England v Slovakia World Cup 2024 match in which England squeezed a 2-1 win. It was more notable by the running commentary of a local Spaniard who must have been Pep Guardiola in disguise, given his ‘significant knowledge’ of the game (ahem…).
Life Two 