By The Way...

Reinhold is walking from St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles. Again.
"Twenty-acht kilometres für der pleasure of it. When I haf walked here in April, it was snowing"

He is perhaps fifty-five years old, and has the bearded, weathered, lean, long-haired look of a lone long-distance pilgrim. He carries a compact light blue pack and tells us his story outside the Auberge d'Orisson as Patxi clears the table.
"I haf left my home in Bavaria in March. I walk to Santiago and now I walk home. My Mother died in my arms just before my leaving. Now there is just me."
"My father always told me one phrase when I was a boy: "Vorsicht auf deinem Weg. Take care on your Way"...
We ask him to write it for us, then we shake hands.
Alone on the asphalt, he looks back from the first bend on the uphill climb from the Auberge.
And waves towards us and the rising sun.
(Click on Reinholt's writing for an antipodean sunset.)