The Camino does NOT start in StJpdP - discuss

[Anthony18]

Members will be aware that I am neither a contrarian nor a provocateur but that I do like, now and again, to ask questions a little beyond which is the best bar to discuss the best sleeping bag in.

So, as I viewed a thread started by a new member who is flying into Madrid and probably training it to Pamplona asking how to get from there to a small provincial French town in the western foothills of the Pyrenees, I wondered, again, why do people think that the Camino starts in St Jean pied de Porte?

Our new member could start walking to the shrine of Santiago from Pamplona, as many do. They could, if they were determined to travel away from Santiago before walking to Santiago, have made their way to historic Roncesvalles. They could, if they wanted to, head for Somport or Irun or even Barcelona but everyone wants to get to StJpdP and then leave it the following morning via a potentially crippling walk up and over a thumping great hill for no other reason that I can discern than "that its there" (Mallory, I forgive you) or because that is where their guide book starts.

With all due respects to @Monasp and the good folk of the Bureau des pèlerins de Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Why?

I started in SJPP. If I ever get back to Spain for another camino...and I do the CF, I'm starting in Roncesvalles. That's where it really began for me. I was excited to cross the Pyrenees, but I hiked it during an overcast and rainy day. Loved the ginormous Albergue de peregrinos de Roncesvalles, and the next day's walk to Zubiri was spectacular!! I've spent quite some time reviewing my pics and videos of my trip during these crazy times. Buen camino to all!

 

[Peregrinopaul]

Fr Elias made an enormous contribution to the Camino de Santiago especially the idea of walking it, but many others had a hand in its 20th century revival. I've attached a couple of pdf's which illustrate that the camino has a much more textured, you might say chequered, history than I had ever realised before we all went into lockdown and I had little else to do than research the history of the camino. Believe me, they make interesting reading, and there's plenty more they came from..

The documents you posted made fascinating reading. The second one even somewhat disquieting. thanks for enlightening me.

 

[Kathar1na]

The documents you posted made fascinating reading. The second one even somewhat disquieting. thanks for enlightening me.

Your comment made me curious.

Instead of just opening the two documents and having a quick look at the name of the authors, the titles and the first few lines, as I had initially done, I proceeded to actually read the 34 pages of Revival of the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela: The Politics of Religious, National, and a European Patrimony, 1879–1988 by Sasha D. Pack who, as I now know, is a professor at the University of Buffalo and a historian of Modern Europe, specializing in Spain and the Mediterranean world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And I am glad that I did! It’s an excellent essay, and it provided a few new insights that I hadn’t seen before. I had already read a ton of papers - ok, maybe only a few dozens - about the contemporary revival/reinvention of the pilgrimage to Santiago and had not expected to read anything new.

Thank you to @dick bird for posting it.

PS: Roncesvalles gets a mention in passing but not a word about SJPP.

 

[VNwalking]

Naivete leaves you open to surprises. For all I knew (on my second camino, even!), the Francés started in SJPP. So it was a shock when I got to Roncevalles to see how many pilgrims were staying there. I knew of only 6 of us who'd started in SJPP - and was unaware that many more would begin where our first day was ending. It was early March and by dusk the winter albergue was full.
(And no, I had not seen nor been influenced by the movie. What I 'knew' was from Brierley and word-of-mouth.)

That second link is 'interesting', @dick bird! Lots to digest!

 

[Bradypus]

I just read the Pack essay with great interest. So much in there to consider. I was astounded to read that those chapter members who were openly sceptical of the 1884 authentication were suspended a divinis. That's a pretty substantial smack on the wrist! Feelings were obviously running very high with so much at stake

 

[David Tallan]

Sure. But I was trying to answer the original question, something on the lines of 'why do so many people think the camino starts at SJPdP?', and the answer is - partly because UNESCO gave it World Heritage listing thus reinforcing the idea, or misconception, that this was the 'real' camino. As you point out, everyone's camino (or maybe pilgrimage would be less ambiguous) starts where they do.

Incidentally, formal recognition of a camino is crucial to a camino's survival. Being a Bien de Interés Cultural means that in Spain the officially recognised caminos are protected and maintained at significant government expense.

I really don't think that the perception it begins in SJPdP is because UNESCO gave it World Heritage listing, as neither the original nor the revised listing indicated a start in SJPdP. The UNESCO listing likely drew more attention to the route, and to other written materials around the route which indicated SJPdP as a start. But it, in itself, didn't indicate SJPdP as a start at all.

I suspect the reason that many other guides and resources start and have started in SJPdP probably has a lot to do with the fact that SJPdP is the closest transportation hub to where three of the four French routes join up in Ostabat.

 

[The Kolbist]

My view below comes with a caveat, it is my view/opinion and in no way detracts from anyone else’s truth/opinion as they hold it so don’t be offended

When I first started planning I was sure of three “facts” the Camino starts in SJPdP, the Frances IS the real Camino and you haven’t completed it without a compostela…I don’t know if it’s age or whatever but now I know for me it starts where I want, I can walk where I want and from my religious perspective my journey finishes at the cathedral and not the office because my pilgrimage is between me and my God (I walk for religious reasons) not unesco or Hollywood So enjoy your Camino and accept it’s for you not anyone else to dictate where you start or how to walk it…buen camino mi amigos

This is prolly the best answer I've read so far...

 

[nycwalking]

In 2001, I started in Roncesvalles ended Santiago.

In 2002, began in SJPP took Napoleon route. Loved it. Loved the trees seeking sun. The feeling of accomplishment was heart swelling. I walked over the Pyrenees. I completed this pilgrimage in Fisterra. Winter 2014, I took Valcarlos path. I enjoy both routes to Roncesvalles. Prefer Napoleon. Its walking in the footsteps of history.

Camino Frances SJPP to Fisterra feels like the complete package.

Next time out on any route will add Dumbria and Muxia on way to Fisterra.

 

[domigee]

In 2001, I started in Roncesvalles ended Santiago.

In 2002, began in SJPP took Napoleon route. Loved it. Loved the trees seeking sun. The feeling of accomplishment was heart swelling. I walked over the Pyrenees. I completed this pilgrimage in Fisterra. Winter 2014, I took Valcarlos path. I enjoy both routes to Roncesvalles. Prefer Napoleon. Its walking in the footsteps of history.

Camino Frances SJPP to Fisterra feels like the complete package.

Next time out on any route will add Dumbria and Muxia on way to Fisterra.

Oh yes, if you can, do add Muxía! You won’t be disappointed (I hope!)

 

[Peregrinopaul]

Your comment made me curious.

Instead of just opening the two documents and having a quick look at the name of the authors, the titles and the first few lines, as I had initially done, I proceeded to actually read the 34 pages of Revival of the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela: The Politics of Religious, National, and a European Patrimony, 1879–1988 by Sasha D. Pack who, as I now know, is a professor at the University of Buffalo and a historian of Modern Europe, specializing in Spain and the Mediterranean world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And I am glad that I did! It’s an excellent essay, and it provided a few new insights that I hadn’t seen before. I had already read a ton of papers - ok, maybe only a few dozens - about the contemporary revival/reinvention of the pilgrimage to Santiago and had not expected to read anything new.

Thank you to @dick bird for posting it.

PS: Roncesvalles gets a mention in passing but not a word about SJPP.

I completely agree. There is so much fascinating detail.
I was astounded to read the account of the 1948 Holy Year, when “An organisation called Catholic Action Youth organised 68 000 young men arriving in buses on Aug 28 1948. Another 30 to 40 000 arrived from Portugal on the same day.” The mind boggles!

 

[trecile]

On the topic of SJPP, as a Spaniard, I always heard/read that the Camino Francés started in Roncesvalles. I had never heard of SJPP before until I started talking about the Camino with non-Spaniards.

You might find this article on Gronze interesting.

Inicio del Camino de Santiago Francés: ¿Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port o Roncesvalles?

Si bien la peregrinación de largo recorrido se está convirtiendo, año tras año, en un fenómeno porcentualmente minoritario, en el presente aún somos muchos los que comenzamos nuestro Camino en el Piri

www.gronze.com

 

[JabbaPapa]

PS: Roncesvalles gets a mention in passing but not a word about SJPP.

When I walked through in 1994, the one special thing about the place (well, setting aside the inimitable Mme Debril) was that it was the first place where you could meet pilgrims having come via different routes than yourself (which for me, coming from the lonely Paris Way, meant meeting other pilgrims for the first time that Camino).

I *think* a couple of people were starting there ?? Most from Le Puy, a few from the Vézelay Way

But many more (Spaniards) started from Roncesvalles.

Seems sensible to talk not much about SJPP in a history to 1988 ...

 

[JabbaPapa]

I suspect the reason that many other guides and resources start and have started in SJPdP probably has a lot to do with the fact that SJPdP is the closest transportation hub to where three of the four French routes join up in Ostabat.

I think there are several overlapping reasons, including the increasing tendency to cut the Camino up into portions and give them specific names (so "Francès" = SJPP > Santiago), and a post-90s tendency to treat the Camino like a hiking trail, and so with a beginning, middle, and end.

But you're right that the marketing has impacted perceptions too !!

 

[JabbaPapa]

So, my reply to the statement posed by @Tincatinker - for some people the Camino (Frances) does not start in SJPP, for some other people it does.

Sure, but there's an ontological element here, which goes beyond the opinions of particular individuals on where they think it "starts".

And thing is, from that ontological POV it doesn't even necessarily "end" at Santiago de Compostela, although that place is the one single location common to all Camino Ways.

The Camino has a myriad of starting points, and a myriad of end points -- though as to end points the crushing majority of individual Caminos end in Santiago, and a very large number of others in Fisterra/Muxia.

The Camino is a network of routes that pilgrims can and do travel in either direction, from a multiplicity of beginnings and towards a multiplicity of endings. The fullest version of that is home to home the long way 'round, via Santiago.

 

[Former member 99290]

Sure, but there's an ontological element here, which goes beyond the opinions of particular individuals on where they think it "starts".

Yikes I don’t know what that ‘ontological’ means, but I’m sure I could look it up. And no doubt you know more about this start, finish concept than I do.

Anyway, I’ve thought better of having posted further on this already much commented on topic - as was my first instinct - so I’m going to delete my recent musings. I’m off to the dictionary

 

[dick bird]

Your comment made me curious.

Instead of just opening the two documents and having a quick look at the name of the authors, the titles and the first few lines, as I had initially done, I proceeded to actually read the 34 pages of Revival of the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela: The Politics of Religious, National, and a European Patrimony, 1879–1988 by Sasha D. Pack who, as I now know, is a professor at the University of Buffalo and a historian of Modern Europe, specializing in Spain and the Mediterranean world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

And I am glad that I did! It’s an excellent essay, and it provided a few new insights that I hadn’t seen before. I had already read a ton of papers - ok, maybe only a few dozens - about the contemporary revival/reinvention of the pilgrimage to Santiago and had not expected to read anything new.

Thank you to @dick bird for posting it.

PS: Roncesvalles gets a mention in passing but not a word about SJPP.

You're welcome. I've spent the last few months trying to find out as much as I can about the camino and its history. It is far more complex than I could ever have imagined. Learning about it is almost as gripping as doing it. Almost.

 

[Kathar1na]

You might find this article on Gronze interesting.
https://www.gronze.com/articulos/in...ances-saint-jean-pied-port-roncesvalles-16327

The author is Anton Pombo, a Spanish journalist, guidebook author, Camino historian and Camino ‘personality’. He tends to be a bit polemic in these Gronze articles. One quote: When they started to paint yellow arrows from Roncesvalles to Santiago, the purists reiterated the well-known phrase that "the Camino begins at the door of your house". El Camino comienza en la puerta de tu casa. IOW, neither in Roncesvalles nor in SJJP unless you happen to live there.

It struck me how this sentence has been forced into a new meaning. It used to simply mean just that: You start walking to Santiago from your own front door.

With the popularisation and globalisation where so many walkers cannot start walking from home or don’t want to do so, this simple statement gained some metaphysical meaning. Same with the newer slogan that the camino / pilgrimage or similar does not end in Santiago but continues despite the fact that the foot walking clearly ends there (ignoring the Fisterra narrative for a moment). People rarely walk home or at least return to SJPP on foot.

No earth-shattering epiphany of course, just a realisation how one gets drawn into a narrative or idea and starts to accept it as a kind of universal truth when one hears or reads it often enough.

 

[dick bird]

Yikes I don’t know what that ‘ontological’ means, but I’m sure I could look it up. And no doubt you know more about this start, finish concept than I do.

Anyway, I’ve thought better of posting something on this already much commented on topic - so I’m going to delete my musings. I’m off to the dictionary

Hi. Now I'm really going to mess with your head. Ontology is essentially about things which may or may not exist and how they may or may not relate to each other, assuming they do, actually exist. This is as opposed to epistemology which is about how we know, or think we know about things which we think are real.

Nah, I'm just making it up.

 

[Former member 99290]

Hi. Now I'm really going to mess with your head. Ontology is essentially about things which may or may not exist and how they may or may not relate to each other, assuming they do, actually exist. This is as opposed to epistemology which is about how we know, or think we know about things which we think are real.

Nah, I'm just making it up.

Thanks @dick bird That’s got a touch of the ‘unknown knowns’ and ‘known unknowns’ about it.

I went to the dictionary and looked up ‘ontological’ and was able to confirm my suspicions that I can continue to live happily without ever having to use that word other than in this reply.

But thanks for caring enough to explain so beautifully, if that is really you and if that is in fact what you did

 

[wayfarer]

Hi. Now I'm really going to mess with your head. Ontology is essentially about things which may or may not exist and how they may or may not relate to each other, assuming they do, actually exist. This is as opposed to epistemology which is about how we know, or think we know about things which we think are real.

Nah, I'm just making it up.

This is a bit like the atheist's prayer in the old joke:
Dear God.....if there is a God.....save my soul.....if I have a soul.
All bases covered, just in case.

 

[VNwalking]

Ontology is essentially about things which may or may not exist and how they may or may not relate to each other, assuming they do, actually exist.

Unless you are a biologist: in that realm ontology is the developmental history of an organism.


What's with all the fancy words, anyway?
Practically, the Camino starts in all sorts of places and follows an infinite number of routes.

We humans seem to need names for different routes on maps with discrete beginnings, though, so the current convention (that a lot of people believe as truth) is that there's a thing called the Camino Francés and it starts in SJPP.

Never mind that it's a modern invention, only an approximation of one of the many old routes people once took. Now it is THE camino, SJPP is where it starts, and the Route Napoleon is the only authentic way. Say anything long enough, and people will begin to believe it.

 

[peregrina2000]

It’s an excellent essay,

I have not read much in the scholarly literature about the revival of the camino. But when @Kathar1na offers this opinion, I decided it was time to take a look! It is fascinating. For those who complain about the Camino’s blending of the national political interest with the religious interest with the financial interests of both the government and the church, this is a great, succinct historical explanation. Though I agree with @Peregrinopaul, somewhat disquieting. I can’t help but wonder how much cynicism played a part in the revival.

And for some historical insight on the neverending debate about tourist or pilgrim, this is a good place to start. If the church doesn’t care about the difference, why should we?!

 

[JabbaPapa]

- so I’m going to delete my recent musings

Oh no !! They were very interesting !!

 

[JabbaPapa]

Crikey !!

Ontology concerns itself with what exists. Epistemology with Truth, truth, "truth", and "truths".

 

[JabbaPapa]

No earth-shattering epiphany of course, just a realisation how one gets drawn into a narrative or idea and starts to accept it as a kind of universal truth when one hears or reads it often enough.

Maybe, but I'm on my third start from home to Santiago, plus my 2000 Home to Rome.

 

[Former member 99290]

What's with all the fancy words, anyway?
Practically, the Camino starts in all sorts of places and follows an infinite number of routes.

Love ya work @VNwalking

 

[PodiensisPlus]

I set out from SJPP a few years ago on the first hike of my life because when I first thought of the Camino forty+ years earlier the idea of walking unchallenged across an international border had a certain romantic appeal. And it proved a delightful moment, not lessened by the fact that slipping across borders isn't as rare these days and was probably never as rare as I imagined as a schoolboy. As I crossed I thought of the armed guards in towers at the Finland-Russian border and that overnight train from Paris to Brussels in 1970 when the train sat for hours during the customs inspection as we stood (no seats for us poor students) and shared a bottle of Jenever passed around by some Dutch sailors. Also the time I somehow walked through the wrong doorway in Stockholm airport and never had to present my credentials. It was a matter of concern when I tried to leave having never officially arrived.

That doesn't, I suppose, explain why I started in SJPP, but only why I started east of the Pyrenees.

For me my hike starts when I leave my wheelie behind, whether at home or stored in a hotel in Paris or Bayonne.

 

[PodiensisPlus]

It just occurred to me that in the French movie Saint-Jacques… La Mecque of 2005 where the protagonists start in Le Puy, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is a turning point of the narrative: that's where their forced group walk ends and where they would be free to return home but where they decide to continue together to Santiago. Both an end and a start.

For me personally, the Pyrenees were also a kind of incision: for a long time I knew that I had to get to the foot of the Pyrenees and then we will see ...

OMG, you SJPP people, you all start in the middle ... .

And I certainly met French walkers who finish their trekking in Roncevaux, perhaps to return and continue, perhaps not.

 

[VNwalking]

Maybe, but I'm on my third start from home to Santiago, plus my 2000 Home to Rome

And?
Even though that's the lens through which you see the camino, other people's lenses are different and no less valid. Anyway what you quoted is unrelated to your post.

Crikey !!

Ontology concerns itself with what exists. Epistemology with Truth, truth, "truth", and "truths".

Fortunately not everyone here is a philosopher. So we have to look up words like that. The definition Dick quoted is what you can find with a quick Google search, so if you don't like it perhaps you should edit Wikipedia.

The camino starts where one starts it, whether it be in Sarria, Monaco, or SJPP.

 

[henrythedog]

I have not read much in the scholarly literature about the revival of the camino. But when @Kathar1na offers this opinion, I decided it was time to take a look! It is fascinating. For those who complain about the Camino’s blending of the national political interest with the religious interest with the financial interests of both the government and the church, this is a great, succinct historical explanation. Though I agree with @Peregrinopaul, somewhat disquieting. I can’t help but wonder how much cynicism played a part in the revival.

And for some historical insight on the neverending debate about tourist or pilgrim, this is a good place to start. If the church doesn’t care about the difference, why should we?!

It’s generally easier to wait for @Kathar1na to provide the synopsis.

By the way - to nobody in particular - is it just me who is embarrassed at the command of the English language that some non-native speakers have? If only my Spanish could ever achieve that standard …

 

[Kathar1na]

It’s generally easier to wait for @Kathar1na to provide the synopsis.

And that made me giggle, too ...

 

[VNwalking]

is it just me who is embarrassed at the command of the English language that some non-native speakers have? If only my Spanish could ever achieve that standard

No. Same here.

 

[JabbaPapa]

The definition Dick quoted is what you can find with a quick Google search, so if you don't like it perhaps you should edit Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is useless as a resource for that sort of thing.

 

[VNwalking]

Of course it is. Which is why (if you know better) you should edit it, rather than getting impatient here. We unknowing hoi polloi are the wrong targets.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Not targeting you VNW

 

[zenofmatthew]

More and more I am convinced there is no "real" route other than one's route toward Santiago. It's about the journey, the purpose. It starts in your heart and ends up the road a piece.

 

[CharlieChu]

Very many thanks for this. I do not understand the compulsion to start at SJPdP. It is not one of the great medieval assembly points for pilgrimage. Do we blame Brierley? Why not start from Vézelay, le Puy, Paris - or anywhere? Your own front door, if you live in Europe? Why not choose a less populous route?

My first Camino, my wife and I started from Le Puy. We were 65 years then, daily walkers but not big hikers. By the time we reached Saint Jean, we were in great shape. We were not afraid of the long climb and long descent on the way to Roncesvalles. We enjoyed it. Whenever we hear of someone arriving in Saint Jean, intending to spend the very first day of the very first Camino going to Roncesvalles, we think, who gave these newbies such impractical advice? Starting either several days before Saint Jean (Orthez perhaps) or starting in Roncesvalles would avoid many physical injuries, which I believe are common.

 

[Pafayac]

For most French pilgrims, Camino does not start in SJPDP, but either in Le Puy-en-Velay, or in Vezelay, or in Arles, or in Tours, Paris....
For some Spanish pigrims, it starts from your home...
In fact, the Camino starts where you wants because before being an itinerary it is a change of spirit...

 

[lalaone]

After reading through every post on this very interesting thread, here is a name not yet mentioned: Petrarch. The Italian poet’s scaling of Mt Ventoux in France in 1336, for right or for wrong, was widely understood as the first time somebody scaled a mountain for their own purposes, separated from work, force, necessity, or routine travel between places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux

Petrarch specifically lamented not being able to see the Pyrenees atop the expansive views from Mt Ventoux. That fact alone makes me wonder if there wasn’t some earlier French or Italian connection, lost to us now, but known even intuitively to earlier guidebook writers (even of the later 20th century), who gave the starting point of St Jean in France?

It also makes me wonder whether there is a Renaissance angle to the Camino’s own renaissance. Even, paradoxically, as that period witnessed decline in the pilgrimage to Santiago.

“Why St Jean?” would take more research –

but my initial hunch is maybe simply because it was not so strictly connected with as many old commercial routes, and hence seen as more “authentic” by earlier researchers looking for a sort of individualism inspired by Renaissance humanists, carried forth in various forms by Enlightenment figures like Rousseau in his late-life essays “Reveries of a Solitary Walker,” and German Romanticists like Goethe – and then somehow carrying forward in time through books and recommendations, whose emotional background and historical influence is not always explicit.

 

[Kathar1na]

I don't like starting a new thread and while looking for a suitable contender I remembered this mega thread.

So here's my news: I discovered that newsletters and similar publications from the early days of the Camino revival, i.e. before 2000 and even before 1993, have been digitised and are even freely accessible online.

For example:

• Peregrino - Boletín del Camino de Santiago. First issue: September 1987. Editors: Spanish Camino Francés associations.
• Boletín Ruta Jacobea. First issue: May 1963. Editors: Camino de Santiago Association of Estella.

Some of the early Peregrino editions have a list of the refugios (predecessors of the Camino albergues) along the Camino Francés. Times have changed indeed .

https://bibliotecajacobea.es/revistas-espanolas/2000031-peregrino-digitalizada.html
https://www.caminodesantiagoestella.org/boletin-ruta-jacobea/

 

[Bradypus]

Some of the early Peregrino editions have a list of the refugios (predecessors of the Camino albergues) along the Camino Francés. Times have changed indeed .

Thank you - a treasure trove! I spent some time last week re-reading and transcribing my Camino diary from 1990 so many of those refugios are still fresh in my mind. I just had a look at issue number 13 of Peregrino which came out just before my walk. So many familiar places listed in the Guia de refugios. Times have changed and the refugios certainly have. I had completely forgotten sleeping on straw in the palloza refugio in O Cebreiro. And my memory had mercifully erased the Samos refugio from my mind too - no water (tap at the petrol pump outside) and no toilet (instructions from the monk in charge of pilgrims to go into the small clump of trees across the road and crap there - I assume the brothers had more private arrangements).

PS: The cover price of that May 1990 Peregrino was 275 pesetas. Just for context that was about the cost of a refugio bed at the time - 300 pesetas was a fairly common charge or recommended donation. Roughly the equivalent of 3 euro though in purchasing power today that would be equivalent to about 6 or 7 euro. A menu del dia in a restaurant would typically be about 700 pesetas.

 

[Antnix1]

Members will be aware that I am neither a contrarian nor a provocateur but that I do like, now and again, to ask questions a little beyond which is the best bar to discuss the best sleeping bag in.

So, as I viewed a thread started by a new member who is flying into Madrid and probably training it to Pamplona asking how to get from there to a small provincial French town in the western foothills of the Pyrenees, I wondered, again, why do people think that the Camino starts in St Jean pied de Porte?

Our new member could start walking to the shrine of Santiago from Pamplona, as many do. They could, if they were determined to travel away from Santiago before walking to Santiago, have made their way to historic Roncesvalles. They could, if they wanted to, head for Somport or Irun or even Barcelona but everyone wants to get to StJpdP and then leave it the following morning via a potentially crippling walk up and over a thumping great hill for no other reason that I can discern than "that its there" (Mallory, I forgive you) or because that is where their guide book starts.

With all due respects to @Monasp and the good folk of the Bureau des pèlerins de Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Why?

I don't think I replied to this before.

My reasons:
1. I wanted to start the French camino in France
2. Cheap flights from Dublin to Biarritz

 

[WGroleau]

Mom: "If everyone jumped off the Empire State building, would you do it, too?"
Son: "Well, it wouldn't really hurt to land on that pile of bodies."

 

[nycwalking]

Mom: "If everyone jumped off the Empire State building, would you do it, too?"
Son: "Well, it wouldn't really hurt to land on that pile of bodies."

Excellent!