Today was much easier, as we were hiking our way down through the foothills of the Pyrenees. After the tough challenge of the peak yesterday, there was a growing camaraderie among the "Pilgrims" - sharing the experiences of the first day and generally touching base with fellow walkers.
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| Monastery church with hotel building on left |
We started from the relative luxury of the Hotel Roncesvalles rather than the large dormitories of the traditional pilgrim accommodation and headed down through more stunning scenery - beech forest - crossing streams and rivers by bridges and stepping stones.
This tranquillity was brought to an end about an hour before the end of our walking day with a thunderstorm. As we were walking along in the rain we encountered a (very cute) wild boar piglet. My initial concern was "Where's Mum?" - they are quite big and can be aggressive - but it eventually it became apparent that it had been spooked by the thunder, run off and somehow got trapped on the footpath which was fenced in on both sides. Therein was the problem, with fence on both sides there was no where to encourage it to go. The piglet then decided that with no mum we were the next best thing and decided to follow us, everywhere, running around our legs etc.
So what do you do when followed by a wild boar piglet up in the hills in a foreign country? Big moral dilemma, given its survival prospects were being reduced by the minute.
Well at the end of the path there were some houses, so we let it into someone's garden and closed the gate. At least it could have fun digging up the grass!
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