Something I realized VERY soon, doing a marathon or a Tri is exhausting but doing this is more so and needs every ounce as much spirit and will power because you get up every day all week, all month and hit the road again and again. These days we do it as a challenge and an inspiration but I wonder what inspired the pilgrims 1200 years ago with minimal to no facilities along the way, marauding bandits, moors and unfriendly villagers to make this journey of what surely must have been a journey of incredible faith !!
This part of the hike involved traversing an ancient Roman road that is now overgrown in most parts with roots and trees, but you can still see the cobblestones and brick road through the mountains . The Romans must have been fantastic people, to have the engineering resources and build these roads and structures along the way- oh wait, they had outsourcing back then in the form of slave labor. never mind, they were just excellent managers and building contractors :) See picture to get an idea of the road, amazed its lasted so long.
This was the Via Agrippa, that we followed - it really took its toll on Tom´s knees which were already buggered up thanks to multiple motorcycle accidents in his wild and wooly youth. He was hurting in a big way
Similar to the people setting out water stations and beer and ice cream stations (Detroit) for marathons, here you´d find self serve water stations and cool little refreshments for pilgrims along the way - people really appreciate that you are making this journey and often times we´d get a round of drinks, hugely reduced bar tabs and food and room rates if they knew we were Peregrino´s (pilgrims)
pìcs of a couple of water stations - the second one was dated from the 1700´s
anyway, at the end of the 2nd day we reached a little town named Zarautz on the north coast and found a tiny pension that had a room in the attic (the roof sloped down so that it was only 4 feet from Tom´s head on his bed)
we were getting conditioned to the walking by this time. No more groaning when we saw a steep incline and I believe I´ve actually learned to love mud :)
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