Anyone LIVE on the Camino (or recently complete) with update

[coldweather]

I completed the Camino Frances in early June 2013. I would love some updates as I can't let the Camino "go". I have a longing to be on the Camino right now and the closest I can come it to try to "live" it through others current experience.

How's the weather? It looks like it has been nice and not too hot.

Does anyone know how many people started from SJPDP recently?

How's the "race for the beds" going?

How are your sprits? (Stick it out. You will not regret it.)

Updates are most appreciated.

Buen Camino!

 

[peregrino_tom]

Well, as I´m seeing out the hours in an internet cafe in Irun, waiting for the midnight bus to Ribadesella, here´s what it´s like to be on the cusp of returning.
I clocked a few pilgrims at the bus stop at Biarritz airport and chatted to a few as it started to rain. Some going via Bayonne to SJPdP. Me heading to the Norte via Biarritz station - where I chewed the fat in broken French with an young Andorran girl awaiting a lift to Santander to start Norte/primitivo. She´s a scout leader back home, so relishing long stages and hills. There´s an outside chance we may arrive in Santiago at the same time - to me, that would be unsurprising camino if it happened.
I met a Quebecoise on the train and was happy to walk her over the old bridge from Hendaye into Spain and on up to the Albergue. She´s about to start her second camino having completed CF two years ago. She was dog tired from her journey and had fingers crossed that there´d be space in the albergue. Well the main part was full but they have an overflow downstairs so she was very happy with that. A shame that the hospitalero wasn´t the same as the one from March. The former´s gentle gravitas (and white beard) seemed the perfect introduction to a momentous journey. But I was duly fussed over in the nicest possible way by the current hospitalera as I obviously failed to grasp her Spanish directions to the bus station (duly found, of course, without any trouble at all).