Camino 'Addiction'

After walking on the Camino six times now I'm certain that it can gt under your skin, that something about it keeps pulling you back so that once is often not enough. Friends that me and Becky made two years ago, who swore that they were walking for their last time, have just returned and another friend we made this year has just reached Samos on his second Camino of the year! And me and Becky are planing another Camino (although this one will be on the Portuguese route rather than the Frances).

So if it is possible to become 'addicted' to the Camino what would be the 'symptoms' of this?

1. A desire to walk everywhere even though the buses are quicker. And you have a car, why not just drive?
2. Upon seeing a yellow arrow you are seized by an urge to follow it wherever it leads
3. When a cyclist passes you you want to shout out 'Buen Camino!' loudly (I actually have had to stop myself a few times!)
4. Checking people's backpacks for badges or patches from the Camino - made worse when you are at a train or coach station because someone could just be setting off
5. You want to talk about the state of your feet all of the time
6. Getting to bed and missing the sound of snoring
7. Looking at distance signs in miles and wondering just how far that actually is or else looking at signs in kilometers and knowing that it would take weeks to walk that far
8. Wishing every time you stayed in a hotel, hostel or B and B you could get a sell
9. Trying to tell your friends and family just how special the Camino is and failing completely
10. Trying to go on other walks in your own country to recapture the Camino feeling (possibly with friends/family) but failing completely
11. Deciding to take friend/family member with you on Camino so that they can understand what the Camino's like
12. Constantly being in one of three states: 1. Walking the Camino, 2. On your way back home from walking the Camino, 3. Planning your next walk on the Camino

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The Camino Primitivo

The Camino Primitivo (or the Original Way) is reportedly the very first Camino Way to Santiago in the 9 th century when most of Spain was under the control of the Moors and it runs from near the city of Ovideo in Asturias as it starts in Villavicosa (which also lies on the Camino Norte so many people follow this Way from Basque city of San Sebastian (Donosti in Basque) or in from the French border at Irun ( this route then hugs the Bay of Biscay passing through Guernica, Bilbao, Santander, Llanes before going under the Picos de Europa and then heads along the coast to Ovideo) before branching off onto the Primitivo which goes across the mountains and through the city of Lugo before joining the Frances at Melide. The route is 320km long. Image taken from https://viaalpina2013.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/camino-del-norte-camino-primitivo/

Symbols of the three main Christian Pilgrimages

The symbol of the Pilgrim to Santiago is the Scallop shell of which many can be found on the coast of Galicia and it is actually a symbol of the Pilgrimage (and has become a symbol of other Christian Pilgrimages too) partly because you could find the shell easily there and so could go back home and show it off as proof that you had done the Pilgrimage. It has also been included in carvings in some Churches.

Pilgrims' Trail to Saint Michels Mont, France

I have only walked two of the Camino routes (the Frances and Portuguese) and still want to try many of the others and yet I am also finding other Pilgrimage routes that I want to walk - I did the Pilgrims' Way in the summer which starts from Winchester which is also the starting point for the Pilgrims' Trail a 155 mile route that finishes at Mont St Michel in Normandy, France. The cult of saint Michel was popular in Britain from the 9th century and the Pilgrims walking this way were called Miquelots and many Pilgrims on their way to Santiago. The route is marked by green way markers in Hampshire taking walkers from Winchester to Bishop's Waltham to Southwick and then to Portsmouth where ferries are caught to France and Way markers become blue. Tradition says that, in 709 Saint Michael the Archangel appeared to the bishop of Avranches, Saint Aubert, and told him to build a chapel in his honour on the island. The bishop obeyed and soon sent a group of monks over t

On the Camino

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