Camino Navarro/Chemin Navarrais
Ostabat-Roncesvalles-Puente la Reina
110km (approx)
Highest point: Col Lepoeder 1440m
The Liber Sancti Jacobi (LSJ) claimed that the routes from Tours, Le Puy, and Limoges merged at Ostabat, near St-Palais. Two further routes, the Chemin de Piémont and the route from Bayonne, join further along. Together they cross the Pyrenees via what LSJ called the Portus Cisere (or Portus Cisereus) - the Port de Cise or Cize - and what is now marked on maps as the Col de Bentarte/Lepoeder, descending to the monastery at Roncesvalles, and continuing via Pamplona (where the Baztan route joins) to the junction with the Camino Aragonés at Puente la Reina. This is where the Camino Francés proper starts, though the term is often used to include part of this route.
Although historically the Tours route will have been the most important of the constituent routes, because the GR65 was the first to be created, it is its marking that continues from Ostabat to the Spanish border and beyond. The yellow arrows of Spain start at St-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
For much of the Middle Ages, Navarre owned not only the section south of the Pyrenees but also that to the north, still called Basse Navarre.
Confraternity of St James produces English: guide | factsheet