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14 of us are walking the Camino Baztan in May. This starts in Bayonne and ends in Pamplona, where you can join the Frances. This is an ancient route that has seen few walkers for hundred of years. Gerard Kelly wrote a guidebook about this and our group had a zoom with him last week. It is indeed a lovely route, easy to follow since the locals put up plenty of signs. Accommodations are available, but limited. For a group our size, this has posed a challenge. If you are walking alone or with a partner, you should have no problems.
This link will give you all the information you need. (this path is called: Chemin de Poste)
That's very interesting. I'm going myself in May. The 20th of May to be precise.
Well done on organising your accommodation for 14. Having walked the Baztan, I can well imagine the challenge. But your efforts will be rewarded. A wonderful path, and I can say that despite having walked 4 out of 5 days in the rain and having an unexpected detour around flood waters on the first stage. It was an adventure.
Hi Valerie - do you mean the Baztan (Bayonne to Pamplona) - or the Voie de la Nive or Chemin de Poste (Bayonne to SJPP), which was the OP's original enquiry? I haven't walked the latter, but I imagine you could walk either path in mid March, subject to accommodation being available. You could check on Gronze for the Baztan accom.
Walked it last year in late March. It might be a good idea to check with the places you're thinking of staying to be sure they will be open. A couple of the places I stayed I had to arrange a meeting time to get the key as March is still off-season in that part of the world. Beautiful route, very quiet.
That was also the case for a couple of Albergues when we walked in May. It can apply year round in some cases.
This experience reminds me of my own. I, too, was relying on written instructions from the internet and a paper map, but I did not have a map on my phone with a little dot to tell me where I was! At a bifurcation some local folks who happened to be coming along insisted I take a particular path. My written instructions were unclear, and although it was against my instinct it seemed prudent to trust folks who lived in the area. Big mistake. After walking 35km I was standing on the side of the road with my two boys, looking at the map and trying to work out where we were, aware that in one hour the town hall would be closing and we would not be able to get the albergue key! A farmer in a nearby field drove his tractor over but could not help. Thankfully a passing motorist stopped and offered to drive us. My boys who wanted to walk every step of the way justified the walk by determining we had already walked 10km farther than we were meant to that day!
Hi Monasp, unfortunately the link seems to be in French only (Australian here with only English language skilla). This may be a silly question, but are Voie de la Nive and Chemin de Poste the same route, or are they different options for walking from Bayonne to SJPP?This link will give you all the information you need. (this path is called: Chemin de Poste)
If you use the Chrome browser you can set it to automatically translate to English.
No, they are 2 different paths:
