Skip to main content

Day 7 - Sunday, 17th September, Padron

Today was our longest day on this Camino at 20km but we had breakfast included at the hotel to set us up for the day - I felt a little bit strange sitting in the posh dining room surrounded by people in smart clothes as I sat there in road-dusted clothes but the food was enough to forget this.

It was a buffet with meat, cheese, yogurt and toast with jams and that was the reason why we did not set off until after nine.



After about one kilometre Mum suddenly realised that she as not wearing or carrying her hat, I turned around ready to head back to the hotel to go and find it and Mum saw that her hat's Velcro had attached itself to my bag and the hat had hung on there as I had walked (including over the windy bridge).

Walking today we found that, in the middle of no where, had set up a hut with toilets and drinks and snacks machines and even their own sello so we stopped there for a break - this seems to be becoming more common on the Camino Portuguese with people setting up small unmanned rest stops as opposed to the many, many bars that are opening on the Frances perhaps because there are not yet enough walkers to pay for people to open bars. As I stamped my credential I spoke to a group of three from the Cheque Republic who did not seem to be enjoying their Camino saying that they were walking too far and his feet were hurting.

Today's forest paths seemed to be endless and I seemed to walk through them in a half dazed state some of the time simply putting one foot in front of the other, the view not changing as I went.

We arrived in Padron in the evening and had to walk through the debris from the market that had been on with shoe boxes piled up at the side of the street, plastic bags blowing around the street and even a small teddy bear that had been abandoned that we saved.

We got to the Church of Padron and went in to see the stone alter the boat carrying Saint James' body to Spain had been tied to.

The hotel was further out of town than we had thought and was near to the railway but the owner told us of a short cut to get back onto the Camino in the morning.


















Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...