Day 1 (Roncesvalles to Viscarret) - 7 miles

     Last night, we discovered the need for reservations.  We were going to attempt Zubiri (almost 12 miles), but there were no rooms at the inn.  After many calls, we found a room at Viscarret, which means our travel to Pamplona will be 3 walking days instead of 2.  All of this is probably for the better, starting with a shorter first day to help us with our confidence.  And rooms are now booked up through Pamplona.

    After a fitful night of sleep, as we are attempting to adjust the 8 hour time-change, we left our hotel at about 7:15 AM, a bit before sunrise.  The rains from last-night had passed, so we had good hiking weather (but cold sitting weather), about 50-degrees and breezy.  We were serenaded by a number of new bird-songs, but the birds stayed almost entirely hidden in the trees' foliage (we only spotted a fraction of the species our Merlin program heard, and this was a walking-walk, not a birding-walk, so we did not linger often).  We did identify17 bird species (mostly in the towns), 14 of them being new to us.
    A lot of picturesque farmland and old villages.  We both very much enjoyed our walk today, which ended early at 11:30 this morning.  Had pizza for lunch at a joint run by a man from Breckinridge, Colorado.  And then burned a couple hours waiting for our hotel to open at 2PM.  We went to the local market, and purchased some modest food for an early dinner and some mandarin oranges for an early breakfast.

    The folks today were a lot more friendly - and we met other people with luggage so did not feel as severely judged.  Overall, a much better day.

    A few highlights below:

    Jana and Clark at the Starting Line.

    The walk went through a number of darker forested areas (no photos there) but also some pastoral scenes and some villages.  Here is a photo in the first town we encountered:

    A small section of a field of horses and foals:

    Some (small portion) of the walk was on city streets:

    

    And much of it on paved/flagstone/cobble/dirt trail - except the part where we did the Mario thing to get to the other side of a wider fast-moving stream.

    A picturesque landscape:

    The non-bird wildlife highlight of the day (at least the one caught on camera) - a Cosmorhoe Ocellata (Purple-Bar) moth scene at lunch.  [Apple-AI is pretty incredible at species identification.]

    Featured bird of the day: A barn-swallow showing its displeasure at being photographed.

Featured church of the day: Iglesia de San Pedro in Viscarret.

    One big scare today - As Jana was walking up the street, this German Shepard bolted out of its doghouse and lunged at her and snapped.  Fortunately, Jana startled backwards and the snap missed her by a couple of inches as the dog hit the end of its chain.  Jana's backpack broke her fall, so her back and head did not hit the cobbles.  A couple of bruised joints, but nothing serious.  We were very lucky.

    The local equivalent of a crow - there are lots of Eurasian Magpies here.

    A black redstart on a fence across from the market:

    A Red Kite that swooped a bit over us, disturbing all of the swallows and sparrows in our alley.