We´re on the front page of the Diario de Navarra!

Yesterday, as we struggled against the snow and the wind crossing the Franco-Spanish border and the Cize Pass, a man split from our group and walked off the path into the snow. I wondered what he was doing until he reappeared around a hairpin bend with a massive telefoto lense. An English woman in our group, Beth, told me that she´d heard he was from EFE, the Spanish equivalent of Reuters and he was covering our crossing...and then in Roncesvalles as we walked in, there were TV crews. That was the moment that we, the group of 39, began to understand that we had done something out of the ordinary. It wasn´t reckless because we had an seriously experienced guide, Jean Jacques Etchandy from the Orisson Refuge, but it was tough.

When we stopped in front of the finely articulated doors of the 13th century church to regroup, I congratulated Luna and Rosa ´Do you realise you´ve just done an amazing thing - you´ve crossed the Pyrenees on foot in a snowstorm and you´re only 12 and 7 years old. Íf you can do that, you can do anything´. Rosa ínstantly wanted me to elaborate on what I meant´by ýou can do anything. I could have said ´like Charlemagne, Roland and Napoleon´ but that would have lead to more questions and all I wanted was a cup of tea.

Today when I arrived in Zubiri after a solo walk of 22 kms from Roncesvalles through wet snow, mud - and verdant beech forests - Lisette (our friend who joined us for 2 days with her daughter Feline) and the girls met me with the daily newspaper _Diario de Navarra_ in their hands. Rosa and I are walking across the front page with our poles, my hand on her shoulder, followed by three others in our group. The headline : Pilgrims come down from Ibaneta on the coldest day in May in 130 years.