Day 9 - Tuesday, 19th September, Santiago de Compostela

We got up at 6:30 and packed everything up quickly so that we could be off stopping at the bar downstairs to pay for the room.

There was some confusion over the Camino direction today - the route had been changed since Mum had walked it last year but the arrows had not yet completely faded from the paths so we had to stop a couple of times to work out which way to go.

We found a little manned trailer at the top of one of the hills we climbed and stopped for a drink and got a sello before carrying our drinks over to a bench. I put down my hot chocolate and went to put my credential away only to find that it wasn't in my hand! I checked back at the trailer but it was not there and the owner came out to search with me and several other pilgrims started to look as well - to have lost it on the last day would have been awful and I felt a bit of a fool to find that I must have dropped it as I put my drink down and it had slid under the bench we had decided to sit on.

Near to Santiago there was a new option to take which the guide book told us was both shorter and better signposted than the old way.

We found a young family had opened their garden and were selling drinks and snacks out of their kitchen window and so had a freshly squeezed tomato juice.

The last part of the route to the Cathedral was as badly waymarked as I remembered from last time walking the route but we just kept heading uphill until we got to Alameda park from where we knew the way.

We arrived at 2:30 and stood in front of the Cathedral and rang home.

We went straight to get our credentials and stood in line for about one and a half hours and then headed to our hotel.

Last time Mum was in Santiago she had found a place that made pizzas fresh including Gluten Free ones so we headed there for a celebration meal.

We looked around a few shops and to buy presents and headed to bed early knowing that we had another two days to look around Santiago.

Comments

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

Search This Blog