Santiago, Sunday 16th April

Becky said to me today that it is strange - the day that you arrive in Santiago is, in many ways, just like any other on the Camino as you settle into your accommodation and look around the place you have reached. It is not until the next day when you fail to pack your bag and start walking that the strangeness of arrival gets to you - you are not going anywhere, you are not collecting sellos or wishing anyone a 'Buen Camino', you are staying still and will not be discovering a new place today.

We got up at 8 today and enjoyed the breakfast at the hotel and then went to the Cathedral by 9:30 attending both the 10'o'clock Mass and then the Pilgrim Mass at 12 which, with today being Easter, was extra special (although there was no list of the Pilgrims who had arrived the day before being read out).

The archbishop paraded into the Cathedral accompanied by a band and the Botafumeiro was swung at the start of the service rather than the end of it.

After Mass we managed to see an Easter parade wending its way through Santiago's streets before we headed to dinner.

We spent the rest of the day being typical tourists, looking in shops and enjoying the sights.

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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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