Camino Frances 2018 day 4

Camino Frances 2018 day 4 - Palas de Rei

Today was a VERY wet day! It was wet when we started out for the day and wet when we arrived.

When we were going up the big hill out of town we heard one Irish lady say to her friend, "Didn't we come down this hill yesterday?" To which she received the reply, "We came down a lot of hills yesterday but I don't think was one of them!"

We walked some parts along the road today and other parts were just off the road.

We stopped at a new bar for breakfast which had a small albergue attached with about ten beds. The lady there was nice and, once we had ordered, told us to sit down and she would bring our food over to us.

One of the little chapels that we had never seen open before had someone there doing sellos so we stopped there and were glad to get out of the rain for a bit!

We then discovered what was worse than rain as we had hail fall on us and this stung a lot, we were glad that it didn't last for more than five minutes and went into the first bar that we saw to recover.

At Ligonde we were just talking about how the La Fuente albergue is never open when we walked past it and saw that it was, for the only time since I firstwalked in 2009, open so we went in and found that it is run by a Ministery group who come from Madrid with volunteers manning it in teams for a week at a time. Drinks were for a donation so we stopped for one each and took the chance to warm up a bit again.

By the time we got to Palas de Rei it was chucking it down and the albergue did not have any heating on. We spread everything out as best we could, filled our boots up with newspaper to help them to dry and then were happy when the heating was finally put on after an hour and a half.

We had trouble finding a supermarket that was open but managed to find one so that we could cook that night.

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