We continued our drive north following another Camino trail route in our car stopping at old villages and tiny hamlets and learning about local food traditions of region and other conversations with French folks we run into. There are very few if any American tourists that come to these farming communities and now late in the season so we are pretty unique. Devik our host hasn’t had an American stay at his popular bed and breakfast in 4 years !

Last night we stayed in at a remote farm house with an owner originally from South Africa who is a painter and carefully rebuilding his 200-400 or old house from the original stone walls and lime.

Bon jour ! Everyone has to greet each other with a happy Bon jour ! Every hiker or person on the street – it’s always Bon jour!!

We spent a day moving north visiting other small towns and castles and spending the night at a remote 200 year old farm house outside Ligardes France. We spent a lot of time hiking and photographing the countryside for future paintings as the on and off rain made painting outside not possible.

We learned from a b and b host why there are so many abandoned old houses. Apparently the France laws require that property and assets must be split equally among all siblings and often siblings can not agree on how to divide or sell the properties.

One of our destinations for this trip is to visit the Lavigne family origins in France in the town of Arudy. This bit of genealogy was researched by Alicia father tracing back to this town and other French towns near the border of Spain.

Once we have the car we trekked off to explore more remote villages in the French Pyrenees and southern France near the border of Spain.

We spent two night in Saint Pee Sur nivelle and another night in lanne en baretous. The first days were in basque area of France which is full of basque traditions and culture.

After spending the night and morning in Saint-Jean de luz we trekked up to Bayonne to pick up the car and art supplies and headed off for more rural painting and exploring as the car can get to smaller towns away from railroad lines.

Today we did 2 bus trips and two train trips to get ourselves back to France from our last town stop on the Camino in Logrono Spain. We first took the bus back to Pamplano and another bus to San Sebastián Spain. Then two train rides from Hendaia France to Saint-Jean -de-lac France.

It was tricky to get here as three different apps and program’s including google maps, Rome2rio and omio all said their was no public transportation Logrono north into France. We had to do research for each leg of travel as we arrived to that town.

We hiked two more days on the Camino spending one night in Estella, another night in Sansol and our final Camino night in Logrono.

Each night we were able to find private room in pilgrim hostels or hotels. In Sansol we were able to have a nice group dinner with pilgrims we had been passing for a few days.

We hiked about 14 miles today to the town of Estella. Afternoon rain that started at 2 prevented us from hiking another 5 miles to towns with sufficient hostels for pilgrims so we stopped early. Chatting with other pilgrims from Sweden, UK Spain Hungary and USA Today.

We hiked about 14 miles to Puente La Riena as an ending point. Today was mostly open and rolling farm hills and small villages. We continue to enjoy and see day after day other pilgrims from all over world that we start to know well. The Camino folks are all very friendly as well as locals who all say Buen Camino or some simply happy hello greeting.

We completed about another 12 miles of the Camino Frances ending our day in Pamplona Spain. This town is famous for the annual run of the bulls that occurs in July. We spent the later afternoon walking around and exploring the forts and old town. We had tapas – pinchos and gelato in a very busy Saturday night in town. We stayed in a small apartment right in the heart of old city and action of the 5th floor walk up.

Today we got up early with the other 230 pilgrims who were in this huge hostel and had an early breakfast and then off hiking with hundreds of pilgrims for the entire day.

This day was much flatter and mostly downhill and about 12 miles.

We started hiking the Frances Camino Del Santiago in st Jean pied de port today. We first went to the official tourist office where you register as a pilgrim for the 400 mile hike to Santiago and they create a pilgrim passport to use to be stamped along the way to show that you have hiked the Camino.

We then hiked about 14 miles and 4000 feet of climbing and decent into the town of Roncesvalles. We are spending the first night in a huge hostel for only pilgrims that can handle 230 pilgrims in beds. The place is completely full tonight!

The hike included several hours of cold and in the clouds fog and wind.

Some burros, pigs and sheep were directly on the trail with us.

A shepherd lead his flock of hundreds of sheep in the road past us.

Climbing up and up and into the clouds for several hours.

For our two month visit to Europe we have not made any land reservations for lodging or travels but decided to keep the schedule flexible. Everything from the bike touring to the TMB hiking is being planned often just a day ahead or most often the day we arrive at a location and secure a place to stay or camp.

For travel and trains and city navigation we often use google maps.

We spend a fair enough trying get good Internet service. As you speed along continuous going into train tunnels you lose service and connections.

While we are train traveling it often takes us 3 hours per day to map out trains and arrange hotels and walking from train station to hotels and other logistics.

Some nights on weekends hotels can be very full and difficult to find options to stay.

Other logistics like grocery or coffee or shop we use google maps

It will take us three days of 6-8 hours train rides to move from Cinque terre to the start of the French Camino. We first trained and stayed in Nice the first night and the second night at Carcassonne France.

We did two hikes both taking the high routes between the cinque terre cities. the first hike was between Riomaggiore and Vernazza. The second was between Monteresso and Vernazza. Each of these trails have about 1000 foot ascent. To our amazement very few people hike these higher routes in comparison to the ones lower down where the trail is filled with hundreds of hikers in both directions.

We left Riomaggiore the next day in the rain and headed back into France to head toward hiking the Camino Santiago. We ended up in Nice France.

Today we finally arrived in the cinque terre area and parked and first checked into our room in Corniglia. We then hiked to Vernazza and secondly to Monterreso.

The weather was better but the trails and town were extremely busy with tourists.

It still is a magical place to think that folks developed and terraced these steep hills in 900 AD with limited tools and lived here growing crops on these narrow plots of land.

Today with the forecast of rain all day we did a shorter on the same trail system and hiked to Sestri Levante.

Today we started south from Rapallo on the via della costa trail which has a combination of road and trails along the coast going thru towns both high and low of the coast. A very steep trail in sections.

We hiked a very hilly and cliffhanger section of trail from Portofino to camogli / about 7 miles. We got half way when the signs indicated that the trail ahead was difficult and required several sections of trail with cables or chain to hang on to during cliffs and steep climbs. We finished about 5 pm after starting about noon and ran into our hiking friends from the TMB who were in the same town too.

We hiked from Rapallo to Portofino during a big rain storm day.