| Distance | 28 km |
| Time | 6hrs 10 mins |
| Difficulty | 1270m climbing; Very long day, but otherwise OK |
| Good for | Valley views (weather permitting) |
The official GR11 Trail guide published by Cicerone rates todays walk – which includes the bit we had knocked off the day before on Day 0 – as ‘easy’. Having traipsed uphill for most of the walk and it being an extremely long day to boot, the description as ‘easy’ is somewhat at odds with my opinion. Fortunately the shoes held up well and there were no nasty surprises lurking within.
The weather was generally overcast so not too hot, but the low cloud did mean that views were at a bit of a premium. Signposting was good, particularly in Hondarribia and again from Irun, with the official trail signs sporting a set of white and red painted horizontal stripes – similar to the Polish flag.
This picture was taken right at the start of the walk, adjacent to San Sebastian airport, and summed up the long road ahead very well.
Taken outside our hotel in Hondarribia prior to the beginning of the walk. We weren’t smiling quite as much at the end of the day!
Jason has somewhat of an affinity to Spain and all things Spanish, particularly after having studied in Madrid. His love of Spain is literally worn on his sleeve as he has a tattoo on each forearm, each of an emblem of Spain. One is of the artwork of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (an author who Jason loves), and the other is of El Oso y el Madrono, or The Bear and the Strawberry Tree, which represents the city crest of Madrid.
Rather bizarrely we saw a statue of this second tattoo immediately outside the hotel in which we were staying, which took as back somewhat. It was almost as if someone was saying the walk was meant to be…
Our route took us along the streets into Irun where we met our fourth member of the group, Andrew. Crossing under the main AP-1 road, the path kicked upwards quite unexpectedly, taking us onto the ridge of the early foothills of the Pyrenees. The weather was overcast again, but we were low enough to be under the cloud line and be able to look around at the other hills.
And here’s a picture of the four of us, somewhat out of breath, at a clearing at the top of the first hill, the Ermita San Marcial, which was a pleasant social and outdoors centre with picnic areas. I suspect most people drove there, given the incline we’d just endured.
You can just about see I’d forgotten to turn off the tap on my water bottle thus qualifying me for the next wet T-shirt competition. I soon worked out how to turn it off.
After around 15km of traversing the ridge-line we reached a reservoir at San Anton. This broke up the views of the abundance of trees and also gave us a brief bit of road to walk on to what was to be a coffee stop at Ola Berri Jatetexa.
Having held off stopping up to this point to enjoy this watering hole we found the bloomin’ thing was ‘cerrado‘.
Onwards we trudged to find a clearing and somewhere to stop and admire the view, but this proved difficult as we were climbing again through some thick undergrowth. Here’s one such snatched view.
The path took us along the ridge, arc-ing to the right side of Bera, before a steep descent into Bera itself. With about 5km to go we could see Bera down in the valley below. Again, the cloud cover made for some fairly dull pictures. Having been walking for about 6 hours by now, the views were of lesser importance anyway. We just needed a rest and a long beer.
One last view before the descent showed the road from the north into Bera and demonstrated the height we were at quite well.
Bera itself was quite a quaint place with Alpine-esque chalets such as this dotting along the streets before our overnight hotel stop.
Bera has a river running through it flowing north to the coast. In fact it flow to Irun so had we stayed on the river, we could have avoided all that climbing.
An overnight re-group and an inspection of all our blisters was the order of the day, ready for day 2 tomorrow.
Life Two 