Discovering the Camino

I was at school when I first heard about the Camino, somewhere around 12 years old. I was doing a school project on Pilgrimmages and we had studied the Pilgrimage to Mecca in class. To get some more information I interviewed Becky about her time in Taize and Mum told me about Stuart at Church who had walked to Santiago in Spain.

I wasn't all that interested in finding out more, he was 60 or so and to me back then it seemed ancient, but I took along with he questions that I had asked Becky and did no more preparation than that, I knew nothing at all about the Camino and sat there listening to nightly rituals of washing clothes, seeing everyone sitting around and writing their diaries and miles walked each day.

I heard about a route so few walked that Stuart needed a letter from our vicar saying that he was walking the route as a Christian and of reaching Santiago and having an individual interview with one if Santiago's priests that lasted nearly an hour as Stuart was questioned about his walk and what he had done and experience d to check that he had actually walked as far as he said he had and to check that he had walked in the right spirit. Very different from today's queues and tick-box form, the impersonal process that resembles more a trip to the supermarket's till than what Stuart experienced.

I remember Stuart gave me some postcards of Santiago and a little guidebook before we went back to his living room where Dad and Stuart's wife were talking over a cup of tea. Me and Dad thanked Stuart and just before we left he said to me, 'Maybe one day you'll walk the Camino.' I wonder if he knew what his words would lead to!

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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...

On the Camino

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