Camino Frances 2022 - Travelling Day 1

Camino Frances - Tricastela to Santiago - April 2022

Today was a travelling day to get to Santiago before travelling on to Triacasetela to start our Camino the next day.

I wrote in my diary for this day, 'I am laying in a bed on the Camino. What a strange and wonderful thing to be able to say after the past two years!'

I had managed to do two virtual Caminos in 2020 and 2021 but my last actual walk on the Camino had been in 2019 and here I was at last, back on the Camino and getting ready to walk!

This Camino was for me and my Dad but and was still affected by Covid - my sister came to wave us off but we could not hug her as she had to go back to work straight away and there was a lot of mask wearing still on journeys and in the common areas of albergues.

We set off from home at 8 and got into town to get the bus - it was when we were walking to the bus that the strap on my watch broke so as soon as we were on the bus I went online and ordered a new watch from a shop in Leciester where we would be changing bus and have a bit of a break. Once in Leicester we went straight to the shop and picked up the watch only to find that it had been sealed up without a charger! We therefore had to get another type of watch instead.

Then it was time to get our first sello from the Cathedral at Leicester.

We ate and then got on the second bus to the airport and got through security fine only to find that our 'plane was delayed by varing times from 40minutes to 1hour.

In Santiago the buses into town had stopped running so we had to get a taxi to our albergue (which had already sent us the code to be able to get in late fortunately).

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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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