GR10 Day02

The breakfast was up to the standard of last night’s meal.  We left shortly after 9am and started the long climb.  There were plenty of people on the trail, many with no rucksacks, but quite a few who were obviously doing one of the Pyrenean routes.  We made it up to the col having climbed almost 500m and stopped for a drink and some food.  There were several horses begging for food; they all wear bells apart from the foals.  Having recovered from the climb we started on the descent, crossing over the cog railway that goes to the top of la Rhune.  The descent wasn’t too bad, though there were plenty of rocky areas requiring careful foot placement.  We finally got onto roads down in the valley.  Here we deviated from the route to avoid going into the village of Sare.  It was now getting extremely hot and we made slow progress in the afternoon because of the heat.  We climbed a cobbled track out of the village and then had a long section of tarred roads and graded tracks.  We had several breaks on this section and chatted to another couple of walkers, one of whom was planning to walk to Germany.  We walked an interesting section of road along the boundary between France and Spain; France to our left and Spain to our right.  We then dropped down to follow a section alongside a stream and it was back to crossing very muddy sections in places.  There was a final (never-ending) climb out of the stream before dropping down to the village of Ainhoa.  This really is a classic Basque village, very picturesque, and the pelota court in the village square in constant use while we sat at the bar and had a drink and our evening meal.