Day 9–Saturday, July 8. St Jean Pied de Port (zero day)

This was supposed to be a day of rest for us, but it somehow turned into a day of stress early on. That was caused by me having a time deadline. We had to get our stuff shipped from the post office in St Jean before noon or we would end up staying in town until Monday morning to get our stuff shipped to Richard.

We ate a late breakfast with another couple from America that was staying in the same B&B. The post office is only open from 9-12 on Saturday mornings. We didn’t head that way until 9:15. Pam, Brad Butler, and pretty much everyone I worked with at CTNA knows that I have issues with deadlines. It I don’t have a time hanging over my head, I stay calm (relatively so, shut up Brad). We had already gone through everything, but we didn’t have boxes to ship stuff in.

We got to the PO, and Isabelle was a big help to us. I thought we had to buy prepaid boxes to ship to England. Isabelle fixed us up with boxes and got our price down to about 1/2 of what it would have cost doing it my way. With the extra savings, we’ve only spent about $220 (including England and France) to store and ship all the extra stuff we brought with us to Europe (and we still haven’t gotten a storage quote from Richard–we’re hoping that he’ll be gentle since he’s a man of the cloth). We will not make this mistake again in the future. It would have been cheaper to buy the extra stuff we needed when we needed it. A fool and his money soon part. More fool me.

After the post office, we did the shopping we needed to get done. New bite valves for our platypus’, extra fuel for the new Jet Boil we bought in Santiago, a new short sleeve hiking shirt for me, and just a few groceries. Not only do we bring extra stuff we don’t need, we don’t bring the stuff we do need.

We got a big help at the B&B we are staying at. They agreed to throw our laundry in with whatever their daily load would be. With the threat of rain hanging over the area, they went ahead and dried our laundry (and folded it, too). Clean laundry, showered bodies, full stomachs, updated blog, what more could we ask for (maybe a beer?)

We spent a large part of the afternoon at the tourism office uploading all of the blog entries. Wifi in France is not a given at most restaurants, bars, or cafes, but the tourism offices always come through. We also took the time to talk to family.

We did manage to walk around town a bit before and after the tourism office. The city of St Jean has spent a lot of money maintaining and improving the medieval wall that separates the old city from the new. There is a great walk along the wall where all the kill slits are. Also, you get a great view of the back of the buildings along the main street in the old section.

As we were finishing up for the day to head for my beer reward, we ran into Nadja and Susan from Ireland. Susan hurt her knee on the section of trail that we took the alternative around. She got into St Jean a couple days ago and she is trying to allow her knee time to recover before she resumes the GR10 on Monday morning.

Nadja walked roads into St Jean and has decided to switch from the GR10 to the Camino. We were worried about her attempting the section out of Bidarray into St Etienne all by herself. We thought she might never hike again if she did that solo. As I have said, that is the toughest hiking we have ever done.

We will get all packed up tonight after the beer and before we go to bed. We’re not going to be in a hurry to finish the GR10. We have an extra couple of weeks in October we can take from sightseeing if we need the extra time completing all the trails we are planning.

Now the blog is really up to date!