via de la Plata - Sunday 20th March

via de la Plata - Sunday 20th March - Home to Santiago

This morning was filled with all of the small details of setting off on any holiday – unplugging everything, delivering the cats to the cattery and checking on passport and tickets many, many times.

On other occasions we have taken the coach down to the airport but seeing as four of us were heading down this time we drove and parked in one of the long stay car parks and then caught the bus to the airport. We had already sorted our toiletries into bags but going through security always takes time anyway and we were glad to be through and headed to get some food.

We had only just finished eating when we found that Mum and Dad’s flight to Porto had been cancelled – they had been planning to walk the Camino Portuguese and meeting us in Santiago when we had all finished but there were no other flights to Porto available (or to Santiago either – had there been then they could have caught a bus out from there to Porto.

Our own flight was not cancelled but when we were loaded and seated we found out that it was to be delayed by 1 hour and 50 minutes! Becky dug our Monopoly Deal cards out of her bag and we spent most of the time playing that.

By the time we had landed it was 11:20 meaning that we had missed the last but into Santiago before we had gone through passport control so we caught a taxi to the hotel we had booked beforehand – the taxi cost us 21 euros which seems to have been a fixed rate.

After the long day travelling it was nice to relax a bit in the hotel room.

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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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