It was my last night in a dormitory of twelve, and I did not sleep well, because I was worrying about being up in time to walk the 35 minutes to Bilbao Intermodal to get my bus to Bordeaux. Anyway, my Fitbit tells me that my sleep style is Hedgehog – that is, I am quite nocturnal, but that if I don’t get too much sleep it is of a sufficient quality to see me through the day. It’s more or less right.

I got up at 6am and packed in the darkened dorm; pre-packing the night before meant I did it a) without leaving anything behind and b) without disturbing others. However, when I got to the hostel door, I discovered that it was chucking it down, so I had to go back in and dig out the poncho.

It was a funny old farewell to Bilbao, head down making sure I didn’t get lost. I ran into these ladies in one street:

They looked like a reference to Velasquez’s masterpiece of the Infanta and her ladies-in-waiting from 1624. Frozen in stone in the rain in Bilbao.

I found the bus and was first on. It was due to leave at 08:00. By 07:53 I was still the only person on board ( it was a through bus all the way to Paris!).

We left on time with five passengers, and as many BlaBlaCar drivers. The first driver only took us to Donostia-San Sebastian (which looked lovely). Then we changed over to a trainee – the other drivers were there to supervise and offer encouragement and guidance. This they did, volubly, at every place that took us into a town for drop offs and pickups (Hendaye, St Jean de Luz, Biarritz Airport, Bayonne,  and Castets). I think they confused their trainee colleague. It was all a bit Marx Brothers. Anyway, he drove us through some very heavy rainstorms and got us there only twenty minutes late. Six hours of bus travel for less than 10€ – how do they do it?

I only had to walk from one side of the station to the other to reach my hotel – the bliss of a room and a bathroom to myself. And what a room with a view!

Bordeaux Saint-Jean has a huge steel and glass station building over the platforms, and this very glamorous Second Empire style series of station buildings was erected in the 1890s.

I was exhausted by the long bus journey, so had a nap, and then took a tram into town for a walk before supper. Historic Bordeaux is a beautiful eighteenth century town in golden limestone, a delight to walk around even in the rain.

In the middle of it all was the Cathédrale Saint-André, with its detached bell-tower, the Tour Pey Berland. This is topped by a large golden statue of Our Lady of Acquitaine – the southwestern region of France. I’m not sure it works – a bit like the statue of Our Lady in the chapter house in Ely.

The cathedral was lovely – it has obviously been through many recensions (the weirdly flat and undecorated West end, for example, doesn’t seem to belong with the rest), and there are Romanesque and gothic elements jostling together. But all in all it was beautiful, with a serene atmosphere inside.

I caught the tram back to the station, had an excellent dinner with apéritif and wine for little over 30€, and when I have written this I will be ready to sleep.

It has been a good transition day. I am ready to be home. But it has been good to have a few hours exploring Bordeaux – somewhere that deserves a good deal longer. I’m going to bed tonight thinking over the last two and a half weeks, full of thankfulness for safety, and places, and people, and things I feared I would not be able to do but did, and thankful too for dear Philip Endean SJ, who inspired me to want to walk this way all those years ago, and whose years mind fell on 18th September while I was walking.