![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/files\/2016\/06\/image-22-280x210.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nWe left our hostel relatively late at 7:30, and began an ambitious pace fueled by our excitement. We hit giant hills immediately and they would continue all day, yet continued on for about 1 and a half till a break for morning prayer. During its duration, just about all 20 or so people who we passed started to pass us. The break having finished, the continued at a more moderate pace though we still passed many, especially those who stopped a while at a small hostel in the mountains where we only grabbed a sandwhich to go.<\/p>\n
With 9kms under our belt, we proceeded to tackle the remaining 18. The mountain views were beautiful and kept getting better, as our mountain pass route wound around the summits with the next always higher than the last, the path was filled with look outs over the valleys or random herds of horses, cows, sheep, and goats. We met a number of other pilgrims (from London, a lot from Texas, Sweeden, more French, and Spain) we chatted with a few, walking a bit of the way together.<\/p>\n
The hiking ended with a knee killing decent, where in about 40 mins we lost about half of the elevation that we had gained in 6 hours. The day is drawing to a close in the albergue of Roncesvalles, valley of thorns, close to the spot where Charlemagne lost his rear guard, lead by Roland, while returning to France. \u00a0The town is tiny, 30 residents, and completely sustained by pilgrims and tourists. The albergue here is a pilgrim’s paradise, with good accommodations and services, and it is very clean! It used to be run by a monestary which is still standing as a museum.<\/p>\n
On the spiritual side of things I have a few disjointed tidbits at the end of a long day.<\/p>\n
Brother, high spirits, community, time for prayer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We left our hostel relatively late at 7:30, and began an ambitious pace fueled by our excitement. We hit giant hills immediately and they would continue all day, yet continued on for about 1 and a half till a break for morning prayer. During its duration, just about all 20 or so people who we … Continue reading “First One to the Top Wins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3346,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3346"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/summerpilgrimage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}