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Looking at their website it looks like the basement area is now only used for laundry and a rest area....I hope that's right!Can't answer that but a couple of years back I was invited down into the basement sleeping accomodation to do first aid (on 5 South Koreans) and thought the whole space down there was a fire trap - worried me, a lot.
so would rather be on the first floor!
The short answer is: Yes, one of the modern bunkbeds will be assigned to you if you pre-book.I believe that pre booked beds at Roncesvalles are assigned to the first floor. Has this floor been updated please to the Pod bunks or is it the older style metal bunks?
Looking at their website it looks like the basement area is now only used for laundry and a rest area....I hope that's right!
Hi, I believe that pre booked beds at Roncesvalles are assigned to the first floor. Has this floor been updated please to the Pod bunks or is it the older style metal bunks?
@Atc who asked the question is from the UK. ☺I've never been on the first floor when I've pre-booked.
Not sure what you mean by pods but it was not old style metal bunks when I was there last yearHi, I believe that pre booked beds at Roncesvalles are assigned to the first floor. Has this floor been updated please to the Pod bunks or is it the older style metal bunks?
Not sure what you mean by pods but it was not old style metal bunks when I was there last year
I too didn't know that one could make reservations as an individual, perhaps this is new.
The owner of the Roncesvalles complex which includes the albergue is the Diocese of Pamplona, and a few years ago the prior said that they are still paying off the mortgage of the immense cost for the earlier restoration and renovation.It is about money and income of course - it is always about money .
The owner of the Roncesvalles complex which includes the albergue is the Diocese of Pamplona, and a few years ago the prior said that they are still paying off the mortgage of the immense cost for the earlier restoration and renovation.
I don't understand why it is always about the money? Do the people who arrive by bus pay more for their albergue bed than those who arrive on foot? I don't think so. I have no insider knowledge but I somehow imagine that they may feel that those who arrive by bus from a parish somewhere in Spain to start a pilgrimage from Roncesvalles in Spain have as much right to get a bed as those who for some strange reason travel hundreds or thousands of miles from abroad to start on foot a day earlier just across the border in France . Only a tiny tiny minority of them are "traditional" foot pilgrims who have walked hundreds of miles from home.
You mean the building with the 100+ beds? You were staying in a heavily renovated 12th century building. There's a site somewhere with photos of before and after the renovation works, quite detailed and done by the architects bureau. Enormous structural work. Without this work and the financing you would not have lied in a bed there looking at the walls.and, you know, the 12th century building was rather wonderful, primitive, yes, hugger-mugger, yes, but wonderful - to sleep in a 12th C ex pilgrim hospital, to lie in bed just looking at the walls and the things they have seen
And so did I David as this post from my first camino in September 2004 describes.so glad - it really spooked me!!
Tell you what though, I really miss the 12th century hospital building across the road that used to be the main refugio (you see it in The Way), I slept there in 2005 ... was marvellous, with great - but very cold - segregated bathrooms downstairs .. I loved that place!!!!
Itzandegia - the famous Roncesvalles building with the former 100+ beds dormitory before the restoration. Restoration in Roncesvalles was more than installing shiny drinks machines.There's a site somewhere with photos of before and after the renovation works, quite detailed and done by the architects bureau. Enormous structural work. Without this work and the financing you would not have lied in a bed there looking at the walls.
Itzandegia - the famous Roncesvalles building with the 100+ beds dormitory before the restoration. Restoration in Roncesvalles was more than installing shiny drinks machines.
View attachment 67538
Source: http://leache.com/
Was only in a bed there once--first Camino in May 2005. My hiking companion and I got the last two beds (top rickety bunks) at 630pm as we arrived after a bus full of Spanish. As I remember it was about 100 bunk beds in a vaulted old room and 3 toilets in the basement of which only two worked (probably for males only but memory fails). We walked for almost 12 hours and were exhausted--there was about a meter of packed snow in Lepoeder, companion blacked out at dinner--and again the next night in Zubiri. Then in Larrasoana his knee fully failed--old bicycle meniscus tear needed 100cc fluid drained off. Companion did a in a shadow camino by hitch and until Astorga when he could walk short days again and we finished together.
All I remember from my top bunk, snoring in chorus with 80 others, is 'I don't think I can do this for another 35 days!!" It got better and was a marvelous experience.
BTW, we had both done sections of the PCT.
Nearly everywhere was 'first come first served'; and there was a bed race!!--got overflow 3 more times. Bunks went to the fast, the young, and those that left at 5am. Seemed a bit like life competition off the camino!!
My future caminos started in Pamplona or later!!
Totally off topic but this reminded me;….. I got sooo cold, I should have died, at one point I struggled on and hid myself behind some boulders to avoid the freezing snow storming wind to put more clothes on, all that I had, but my hands had become so cold I couldn't move my fingers to open my pack - I became a little frightened at that point! - took me ages with my fingers down in my groin to warm them .... - I was SO stupid!! ...
Many people are not aware of the immense restoration work that went on in Roncesvalles during a forty years period from about 1980 onwards and the immense cost of restoration, and how dilapidated or unsafe and not fit for purpose buildings were. That was my point.Different building - that was the sympathetic renovation of the old building - I was writing about the new refugio - the soulless one.
Hi, I believe that pre booked beds at Roncesvalles are assigned to the first floor. Has this floor been updated please to the Pod bunks or is it the older style metal bunks?
I see your memories - that mountain - I am a lowlander Englishman but this was a Real mountain! - bad times! I walked over in early April 2005, from Moissac, in France, just a few weeks before you - I was unaware but it had been a bad long winter - I didn't know, no one told me, that they had only opened it two days before, was all very pleasant the first half from St Jean but it turned bad up there, out of nowhere - Man - I nearly died up there! stomping through snow on the high ground, so high, eagles below me in the white swirl, (thankfully become rain on later much lower ground last few miles before Roncesvalles) but up there almost losing the red and white poles - I got sooo cold, at one point I hid myself behind some boulders to avoid the freezing snow wind to put more clothes on, all that I had, but my hands had become so cold I couldn't move my fingers to open my pack - took me ages with my fingers down in my groin to warm them ... SO stupid!! - coming down into Roncesavalles, into the 12th C refugio ... so pleased, so happy, so grateful. Stupid, utterly stupid, though no one told me not to go over.
Is why I now Really advocate caution going over that moutain - caution!