The Dutch Connection

 

Day 33 - Navarrenx

     We picked up another traveling companion from last night’s gite.  Jan is a young man from the Netherlands who is walking the Camino for the second year in a row.  This year he started from the.North Sea in the Netherlands and is walking to Santiago.  He started in March and will do the del Norte route when he gets to Spain.  He is an excellent English speaker and we spent an enjoyable day learning about the Camino and sharing ‘Dutch’  idiosyncrasies.  We also met many other pilgrims who are walking at the same pace as us.  We even found Claire who we thought was way ahead of us.

     We are staying tonight at a campground in a little’chalet’.  It reminds us very much of a KOA. The town is Navarrenx. It has a fortress wall around it from the 14th century.  Our campground is on the river just outside the walls.

     This town also marks the beginning of our route through Basque Country.  The Basque region includes both a French and Spanish section. We only have a few more days and we will be saying goodbye to France. Tonight’s cuisine was pizza from a street side vending kiosk.  It actually wasn’t that bad.