I thought it’s probably convenient to lump together the many hours of plane and train travel from Sydney to the foot of the French Pyrenees into the one entry now. It was something of a blur, really, but we’re finally here in St Jean and ready to kick-off this thing at first light tomorrow.
I left Sydney at 1.00pm local time after a reasonably frantic morning getting my last minute jobs done and my packing finalised. As someone who prefers getting to airports at least two, if not three, hours ahead of time, I managed to front up at the check-in desk, mildly panicked, with just over an hour to go until the plane was due to take off.
Happily, there were no further delays and I boarded what turned out to be a full Singapore Airlines flight after probably my shortest ever stay at an international airport. After a squeezy nine hour flight, we touched down in Singapore just before 7:30pm local time to await the scheduled 11:00pm connecting flight to London. As it turned out, that flight was delayed several hours and we finally took off at around 4:30am. While it’s never a great experience, if you’re ever going to find yourself stuck at an airport, Changi’s not a bad one to be lounging around at.
The landing in London Heathrow was originally scheduled for 7:45am, but with the delay, ended up being closer to 11:00am. Coupled with an extra hour's wait for my luggage to appear (wiping out the time I’d saved by using my UK passport instead of my Australian one at the screening gate), I was very fortunate to make it in time for a perfectly scheduled 12:25pm transfer bus to Gatwick airport to catch my flight to Bordeaux. The bus reached Gatwick South terminal just on 2:00pm and I checked in and walked to the gate (at what must have been the furthest part of the airport) to join the queue to board the EasyJet flight for its scheduled 3:45pm departure.
So what looked on paper like a very lazy half day in sunny England resting at various airports - and even with thoughts of an excursion to a village nearby to one of them for a leisurely lunch in a country pub - turned out to involve quite a few tense moments to ensure I made that final flight out of there!
The one hour flight into Bordeaux, my fifth in four days (having originally flown from Sydney to Queensland to run the Gold Coast half marathon on the Sunday before my departure for Spain), was happily anti-climactic. The long transfer on a public bus into the Bordeaux town centre was both cheap and cheerful, as we toured the eclectic outer suburbs of Bordeaux collecting and depositing a variety of Bordeaux-ians who spoke amongst themselves with uniformly beautiful French accents.
I finally managed to find my hotel in a pedestrian back street and, after showering off the grime and sleeplessness of the past 40 hours or so, spent a couple of hours wandering around the town’s extraordinarily impressive riverfront, where it stayed light until well after 10:00pm. One particularly pleasing sight was that of several groups of younger people sitting on the expansive lawns chatting and drinking beers and not actually appearing to yell obscenities, or vomit, or even trying to knock each other out or throw each other into the river (as they are prone to do back home on a balmy summer’s night).
After a restful night’s sleep, and a full French breakfast at the hotel - stuffed with cheese, yoghurt, croissants and assorted other delicacies - it was time to sort out the backpack, check out and saunter down to the train station - via that sensational riverfront again - to catch the 12:51pm to Bayonne and then onward to St Jean.
I’d love to return to Bordeaux one day. That riverfront was a sight to behold and the magnificent edifice of Le Grand Hotel nearby to mine was something else. The war memorials, too, were a monumental and sobering testament to the sacrifices made in this part of the world while the patrols of modern day military personnel around the train station - armed to the teeth - were a stark reminder that this place is a very long way from the relative tranquility of Australia.
An uneventful but pleasant train trip to Bayonne followed, although it was a little slower than advertised. That meant a bit of a scramble for those of us with backpacks to board the connecting train travelling the spur line to St Jean Pied de Port. It was actually standing at the platform ready to go and, happily, the station staff showed some flexibility and held the train for us. It was only one carriage long but crammed with pilgrims, many of whom had their heads buried in their Brierley guidebooks.
On landing in St Jean, I quickly found the hotel (whose owner wanted the extortionate 72 Euro tariff in cash) and then wandered around the quirky little town to find the pilgrims office where I got my credencial and a scallop shell before stocking-up on some food for a quiet meal back at the hotel.
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