Route from St Jean to join Camino Del Norte at Irun

[trc]

Hello there

This is my first posting so greetings to all.

Just a question... Does anyone know of a good route from St Jean to Irun please?
A friend of mine has walked from Ludlow in England and will be in St Jean soon. He wishes to walk across and join the Camino del Norte at Irun and then on to Santiago.

Regards... T.C.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

http://www.gr-infos.com/gr10a.htm

 

[Dale]

Thanks I've wanted to ask this question too, plan to do the same next spring.

 

[jl]

Hello there TC and Dale,

I am planning to walk from Vezealy in just over a month and it is my intention to make a choice when I get to St Jean as to whether I will follow the GR10 - not a recognized pilgrim path - or whether I follow the towpath of the River Neve from St John out to Bayonne and from there down through St Jean de Luz. Apparently this other path has a group of pilgrim friends working on it and I believe it is quite well marked.

I will decide on the day which I will do - or I may even take a combination of the 2 which looks to me as if it is quite possible to do as well. Either path, by my calculations, would take roughly the same amount of time to get to Irun, and I would suspect that the towpath might be the easier of the two, but then there may well be some speccy views along the foothills of the pyrennees on the GR10.

Omar from this forum will also be walking this path soon and I believe it is his intention to walk out from either St Palais or Ostobat - again quite feasible I think.

Somewhere on this forum is a post from William Marques about the towpath option (and also on his website) if you were to do a search - I asked the same question last year.

Hope this helps, Janet

 

[Dale]

Thanks Janet. Keep us posted on your progress and Ultreia!! Your experience and opinions will be a great help in deciding which route to take.

Dale

 

[Canuck]

Hi!,

Here is a site describing the ''Voie de la Nive'' (Bayonne-SJPDP).
Click on the yellow squares for details. The description is from Bayonne and not in the other direction. Never the less, you have the distances and accommodations along the way.

http://www.aucoeurduchemin.org/spip/spip.php?page=carte

Enjoy!
Jean-Marc

 

[jameswberk]

I posted on something similar a little earlier than when this was posted. You can follow that conversation here:

el-camino-del-norte/topic5642.html

I am very interested in this alternative route ''Voie de la Nive'' (as well as the GR-10 which sounds amazing).

The link above from Jean-Marc aka "Canuck" did not work for me however. Are you still there, or does someone else know what this map is?

Thanks!

James

 

[jameswberk]

...answering my own question. Perhaps it is this map here:

http://www.aucoeurduchemin.org/spip/-Et ... ml?lang=fr

 

[jameswberk]

And to give it a little more information, it seems to be a combination of these three routes:

-Voie de la Nive
-Voie de la côte
-Voie du Baztan

from: http://www.aucoeurduchemin.org/spip/-Et ... ml?lang=fr

 

[Dale]

This site has a map but not a very good one:

http://vppyr.free.fr/pages_transversales/voie_nive/vnive.php?etp=variante_sortie

And wiikipedia lists the town that you walk through.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php...ext=Search&searchengineselect=mediawiki&ns0=1

hope that is of some help.

 

[jameswberk]

Thanks Dale!

 

[jameswberk]

I thought I'd post an epilogue along with some info I found which would be useful to anyone with the same itinerary in mind.

I spent the last week or two in France talking with gite owners/hospitilarios and people in the tourism offices along the way inquiring if it was possible. In the end I found a real route, but only just before I could pick it up. The only lodging along the route was in gites that had been booked for some time in advance and in the end I decided to continue to SJPdP.

However, it is indeed possible to walk to the coast from both the Puy and Vezelay Routes starting in Saint Palais.

It has the following itinerary:
Saint Palais - Hélette 23km
Hélette - Espelette 24km
Espelette - Sare 17.5 km
Sare - Saint Jean de Luz 13.8 km

From Saint Jean de Luz you can continue to Irun on the Sentier du Littoral, an old pilgrimage route which is an additional 18km or so.

Differing routes to Hendaye/Irun from St Jean de Luz here:
http://www.tourisme64.com/files/SL2.pdf
and here:
http://pilgrim.peterrobins.co.uk/routes ... orale.html

Here is a map of the full route from Saint Palais:
http://dongoc.free.fr/lepelerin/stfparcob.html

Which I believe comes from this book which will have a full description of the route among others (in French):
http://www.laprocure.com/randonnees-che ... 23079.html

Distances gathered from this site:
http://maisonfransicaine.over-blog.com/ ... 16439.html

Hopefully this helps someone in the future.

Ultreya!
James

 

[Lori Butler]

However, it is indeed possible to walk to the coast from both the Puy and Vezelay Routes starting in Saint Palais.

It has the following itinerary:
Saint Palais - Hélette 23km
Hélette - Espelette 24km
Espelette - Sare 17.5 km
Sare - Saint Jean de Luz 13.8 km

Hopefully this helps someone in the future.

Ultreya!
James[/QUOTE]

James --thank you for posting this information. It is exactly what I was looking for. I am walking from Cahors this June/July and would like to end up in St Jean de Luz instead of St Jean PP. Just wondering if you have found any further information, or if anyone has done this walk recently? Thanks!