Camino Ingles day 6 - Santiago, Saturday 15th April

I find that never mind which route I walk or how long I have been walking for the day I arrive in Santiago I am both in a rush to arrive and dreading when I finally do get there - the walk has been hard and as much as I wish to stop walking I do not wish my Camino to end.

All impressions and memories of this arrival day are taken up with the city as well so that there seems to be little space for remembering the walk.

We were the first ones up in the albergue and were off by half seven walking again in the dark but this time accompanied also by chill mists.

The route today had more hills than yesterday but was gentler than earlier days had been.

After a 5km walk we stopped at a bar tostadas breakfast and then walked on stopping again on the outskirts of Santiago after another 6km for a drink.

This route into Santiago spends a lot more time in Santiago's outskirts and takes you through a lot of housing before you arrive in the square where we all congratulated each other and called Mum at home to let her know that we had arrived!

We went to our hotel and dropped bags off there before making our way over to the Pilgrims' Office and getting our Compostellas but we didn't make it into the Cathedral to hug the Apostle until 8:15 when the day's crowds had left.

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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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