Edinburgh to St Jean - A quick recap

Edinburgh to St Jean pied du Porte has many routes but we opted for price over time. We got the Ryanair red eye to Santander and were standing at the airport bus terminal at 10.25am an outstanding feat ensuring we could catch the 11am bus. Unfortunately only two of us had cleared the customs and the dozy one in row 15 had got stuck in the family frenzy of bags in various overheads. He duly arrived as the 10:30 bus pulled off and so the three of us jumped a cab. Not surprisingly the cab never caught the bus but the extra 15 euros meant someone lifted our luggage for us. The 11am bus of course was on time and luckily for us was full as was the 12 so we had to kill 5 hours in Santander as out first bus was 4pm.

Santander is full of tapas bars, and so we had a coffee while we gathered our thoughts. For a variety of reasons ...This does not take long and at 11am we headed towards the arch and the tapas bars. We grazed until 3pm and had it not been for The Gambas we could've got a bill of 6 euros each but slow coach ordered from the wrong menu and next thing he's putting a tea bag in the ash tray, a complete social exile!

We returned to the scene of our arrival earlier and boarded the San sebastien bus. 4 hours later and a wee bit more for traffic we closed in on our destination. At this point our leader changed his mind, again.
"Let's stay on until Irun as we might've missed the last train to hendaye that will connect with the Bayonne and subsequent St gien train."

As he went to negotiate with the intransigent bus driver it was providence that intervened. Instead of being thrown off the bus or paying extra, our driver threw a strop and said he was too late to argue with idiots. "Escotia stupido" was working already. At hendaye our retired cabby saw €130 to St gien and that was it. 7:47 and we conceded defeat to the sunset and got a cab. In truth even the bean counter couldn't argue. €60 for an uncertain three hours or €130 for 55 minutes.

What we didn't know was our driver had been on the piss and thought he'd maybe pick up a couple of 10€ fares over to hendaye and back. After missing two turns the co driver become more agitated in his allivante, and other hand signals. Our driver duly stopped and took a long piss in the forest. As we awaited an axe man coming at us we were disappointed to see only the wobbling drunk get back in the car. Another 30 minutes of twists and turns in the dark with only the odd car to remind us we were in occupied territory we arrived.

Oh and how happy we were. Here is good, "aqui esta beuno" and other shouts of open the feckin doors and let us out!

We wandered up to our accommodation and got lost. There followed phone calls with a neighbouring Albergue with a similar name and confusion before a key was found in a bar where the taxi dropped us. A rinse and then food, drink and then bed.

Crack of dawn day 1 - the Pyrenees.

"If it's raining just have a fag and a coffee, I'll be down when it stops"

And as if by magic the rain stopped. The boys marched out and waved goodbye to the battlements, the bridge and started bracing themselves for the beautiful climb to col de Leopold.

By Hunto they were breathing out their arse. Breakfast was overdue and welcome. Fellow pilgrims looked on as they sat huddled over the cola cao, tostada and mermelada. The name for strawberry jam was requested after shouting STRAWBERRY JAM proved ineffective. Clearly a bilingual thing was not going down.


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