Meeting up with a friend

We had a LOT of fun meeting up with Jim on Monday! We caught a really early train and got to Manchester by half nine and Jim was waiting on the station for us both and gave us each a hug and then we went for a coffee and a catch up and then decided what to do next - we did briefly consider the football museum before deciding on the art gallery. we wandered for a while before we found this.

There is a chance that we may not have been taking the pictures seriously as Jim spotted Boba Fett in one and I saw a guy with an R2-D2 hat in another!

Then it was time to eat - we had been considering pizza or Chinese before Jim saw a place doing Pho and raced into it! Having ordered our food I reunited Jim with an old friend - for his birthday last year a fellow Pilgrim, Don, had presented Jim with a rock and told him that it was an Australian tradition that the birthday boy/girl must have a picture with their present a year later to show that they liked it. The rock had weighed at least a couple of kilograms and so had been left behind a lot nearer to Leon than to Santiago but I printed out an enlarged picture and gave it to Jim to have a picture taken with instead! I also gave him one of my 'don't stop walking' badges.

We had a great time talking about the Camino and our lives and our future plans and seeing Jim leave this time was as sad as it was on the Camino - when you walk the Camino you don't simply make friends, you add to your family.

Jim and his rock .. sort of!

Pho - a Vietnamese broth with rice noodles, onion and spring onion in with chicken (the meat that we all chose to have in it). Then you add beansprouts, basil and another herb to your liking as well as chilli and lime (I had neither of these though). We would never have tried this without Jim's suggestion. (Excuse the bad picture!!)

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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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