Camino Frances 2018 day 7

Camino Frances 2018 day 7 - Santiago

We got up today at half six and were out of the albergue by half seven so we were walking through the dark using torches to see where we were going for the first 45 minutes or so. The new waymarkers were no longer about leaving only the older ones with their inaccurate measurements but we really did not mind.

We stopped at the first bar out of Arca which has a hotel attached and had a cafeteria style bar where we used the machines to do our own orange juice and toast and other things were pre-prepared in bowls for us to get.

There are a lot of hills in this last section.

There is a bridge at the 12.5km mark and under that two men had set up a stall with a sello and a few things to buy.

We reached Monte do Gozo and had our usual run up to the monument in the style of Pilgrims from the Mediaeval times when whoever got to the top of the hill here was ‘King of the Camino’. A lot of clearing work has been done here so that we could see the Cathedral from Monte do Gozo for the first time.

As we walked into Santiago we saw the end of an Easter Parade before heading to the square in front of the Cathedral where we congratulated each other and rang Mum to let her know that we had arrived.

We then went to get our Compostelas for which we had to queue for only 20 minutes and then went to our hotel.

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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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