It is raining master pilgrim..

.. and it will keep on raining until the rain has stopped! To mis-quote Gandalf.

A wet day with little let-up, never really heavy thankfully but wet enough (and the weather forecast suggests the next three days will be much the same).

I did however find a bar doing pancakes for breakfast so the day was not ccompletely bad!

We're on the part of the Camino which has a lot of little valleys for rivers and streams thus the day followed one of the camino rules of what goes up must come down before going up and down once more!

Today was a walk of about 15km taking us to Arzua thus we are only about 40km away from Santiago or two day's walk which is a strange feeling - the first five days were such a rush to get to Triacastella in time to meet mum and dad that everything since then seems to have been slow so that it almost felt like we would never get to Santiago and yet soon we will be there. As always this makes me both happy and sad as I both want to get there and don't.

Tonight we're in a private albergue on the edge of arzua la fuente and have a room with only three beds in so, apart from dad's enthusiastic snoring, it should be a quiet night!

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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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