Day seven of one hiker's walk to Santiago de Compostela begins where most French holidays end: on a slow train out of Paris. Writing on The Trek, American pilgrim Marley Kreiser describes leaving the capital on a quiet Saturday morning, walking an hour and a half to Montparnasse station with a full pack, and watching flat farm fields and windmills slide past as the train heads south toward the Basque country.
The journey to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the traditional starting point of the Camino Francés, takes two trains with a change at Bayonne. It's a route many pilgrims know well, but Kreiser's account captures the shift first-timers feel: Paris is all intricate architecture and crowded streets, while Bayonne moves at a gentler pace she immediately connects with. There's a small cultural lesson in there too — she spots the lauburu, the Basque cross symbol representing the four elements, seasons and cardinal directions, painted on a flower pot within minutes of arriving. Traditionally, a clockwise-spinning lauburu means good luck, and she adopts it as her personal emblem for the walk.
The practical pilgrim rituals kick in at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the walled Pyrenean town where almost every Camino Francés walker begins. Kreiser checks into the Albergue de Peregrinos, picks up her Pilgrim Passport (the credential you get stamped along the route to earn the Compostela certificate), collects maps and a scallop shell — the centuries-old badge of the pilgrimage — and even spots a "donativo" hiker box outside the info centre, proof that hiking trail culture translates across borders.
Her best souvenir of the evening costs nothing: a shared card table with three British pilgrims who, astonishingly, have walked a Camino eleven times since 2022. Their advice is the kind worth repeating to anyone considering the route — that the emotional weight you carry without realising it tends to fall away somewhere along the trail.
For travellers, this is a useful snapshot of what the first 24 hours of the Camino actually look like: an easy train connection from Paris, a low-key stop in Bayonne, and a welcome in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port built around albergue beds, pilgrim credentials and instant camaraderie with strangers. You don't need to be religious to feel it — the town exists almost entirely to send people up into the Pyrenees the next morning, and the community forms before you've walked a single kilometre.
If you've been flirting with the idea of walking the Camino, this account makes the barrier to entry look pleasingly low. One train ticket, one passport, one bed — and a shell to hang on your pack.
