On the Camino

Anyone who has walked the Camino has unfortunately seen it - places where bottles or can have been dumped, rest areas under trees where chocolate wrappers have been left lying and yes those disgusting areas where toilet paper lays strewn around ..... bottles can take 450 to many thousands of years to break down, a can about 500 years before it oxidises and toilet paper a couple of months, not only harmful to the environment but a blight on the Camino.

I found this picture in a guest book on the Camino Sanabres

Further to the buff that my sister and Mum bought me the company has made more details of which are on http://www.buffwear.co.uk/new-ss15-adult-headwear/ss15-camino-santiago-collection  - the normal buffs are £17 and they also do some of the designs as polar buffs (with fleece inside) for £26 and there are some cool designs   Pictures of my Camino buff I've had a look on the American site but can't see any Camino buffs up there yet so if anyone outside the UK knows where else these buffs can be bought please do add it in the comments 

The Santiago de Compostela tourist office sells Camino calendars and I buy one each year. At the end of the year I cut out the pictures to craft with and they make great additions to a simple Congratulations card for arrival in Santiago!  

This wrapping paper is made by cutting out stars from blue and yellow paper and placing these on sellotape which is stuck onto the brown paper

For this year's card I went around everywhere in Santiago de Compostella that I could think of that had sellos and had them stamped on cards - not a last minute card that you can make but if you collected any sellos on your own Camino you could photocopy parts of your credential and then glue them onto a card?

For Saint James' Day this year I wanted to do a picture frame but with a difference so I found these box frames with string in them (originally sold in the pound shop for Mother's Day).

The Pilgrims' Festival in Canterbury starts tomorrow for anyone interested

Image taken from http://www.bidorbuy.co.za/item/198307532/1965_HOLY_YEAR_OF_SANTIAGO_DO_COMPOSTELA_SET_OF_2_MHL_SG_1732_1733.html These are stamps produced for the Holy Year in 1965 - one shows Saint James and the other a Pilgrim

Episode 3 is on BBC2 at 9:00 on the 19th April. The BBC website ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004b6f ) says that: The pilgrims are on the tenth day of their journey, with 65km still to go before they reach Rome. Today’s route takes them through an isolated and overgrown wood which is a total revelation to Mehreen, who has never experienced anything quite like it before. The group arrive in Sutri, a medieval town with an even older history. They visit a magnificent Roman amphitheatre, and the pilgrims don’t hesitate to take centre stage. Lesley auditions for ‘producer’ Les, fittingly with a piece from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, while Maximus Gregorius (aka Greg) is challenged to a gladiatorial tussle by Brendan.

For Easter last year I decided to make my family something that could be attached to the outside of our bags and that showed that even if we are slow walking the Camino we get there! Hence I made everyone Sloths with Velcro arms and legs allowing them to be attached to our backpacks

This episode is on BB2 on 12th April and the BBC website ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00042tr ) says that: ' In this second episode, it is day four, and Stephen, Greg, Brendan and Les wake up in a yurt. They are all staying in a hostel on a Roman road in a tiny village in the Tuscan Appenines, and they are beginning to realise how important the simple life is to the pilgrim experience – especially when a donkey appears in the kitchen to try and eat their breakfast.

BBC's The Road to Rome is now on BBC2 - it is also repeated tomorrow (6th April)   Image from  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003wws

There seem to be a lot of Pilgrim statues on the Camino!

I saw this one in Santiago outside one of the shops

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. S callops also serve a practical purpose for medieval pilgrims as it is the correct size for getting water to drink or to use as a small bowl to eat their food from.

  A selection of photos taken in Santiago at night