Day 3 on the Camino Frances, Roncesvalle to Viscarette

We started off our day next to this sign on the street of Roncesvalles. It really didn’t sink in to me that I would be WALKING this distance! This day we found out we were not hiking as many miles as the itinerary in the Brierly book, and many pilgrims were walking more miles than us, every day. We got to Viscarette, 10 km down the Camino, where Laura had used her travel experience to book a room using bookings.com. It was a multistory place with 2 beds to a room, and one bathroom per floor, and 4 rooms per floor. I was glad to take a shower and take a nap. On the way we had walked through 3 quiet villages, lots of pastures and saw a lot of cows. It was overcast but didn’t rain, so it was perfect weather for hiking. Just before Viscartte we crossed the stream below, through a structure I’ve never seen the like of before. This is the civilized way to cross a stream. Some references call this village Biscarret, which is more consistent with the pronunciation. In the 15th century a tax census listed 19 families living here, 5 noble and 14 laborers. Now there are at least 30 people living here, and some commute to Pamplona for work.

We got to town pretty early in the day, had a shower and a nap, and walked to a place on the edge of town and had a hamburger. This town was very small and quiet, with maybe 20 houses, no gas station, and no grocery store. Our packs had been delivered to the municipal albergue, where we picked them up, and hauled them to our hotel. We began to see that everything in our packs that we didn’t use during the day was stuff we really didn’t need. We planned to use the correo till we got to Pamplona, then to send excess stuff like our hiking poles back home.