Camino?

Backing up a bit, I want to say a few words about this trail we will hike. In France it is Le Chemin de Saint-Jacques. In Spain, where it ends, El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Here are a couple of sites that show the routes. On the second one, you must click “cartographie” at the top of the menu-list on the left side of the page.

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/spancmno.html

http://www.chemins-compostelle.com/Leschemins/leschemins.html

According to the legend, St James was a disciple who tried with little success to spread the faith in Spain after the death of Christ. When he went back to Jerusalem, he was martyred and his followers spirited his body away. Miraculously a stone boat appeared and carried them back to Spain where they buried him.

Fast forward to the 9^th century. The remains were “found” and Christians were encouraged by the local Spanish archbishop to make pilgrimages to the site to earn heavenly rewards. Some medieval courts also sentenced evil-doers to make the pilgrimage. Or, there were professional pilgrims who would make the trip for you for a fee, and you’d get the heavenly rewards.

A network of refuges became established to care for the pilgrims’ needs. Your bishop would issue you a pilgrim passport, which gave access to the refuges and assured your rewards at the end. It needed to be stamped at many points along the way, a tradition that continues. We have our passports stowed with our other important papers for the trip. The scallop shell, a symbol of St. James’ miraculous trip, became, and still is, a symbol of the pilgrim. There are journals and “travel guides” written by pilgrims as early as the 12^th century.

Many routes became well established. Four are prominent in France and three in Spain. We will walk parts of the most often traveled ones in each country. On this trip, at least, we will not arrive at the end-goal, the cathedral at Santiago. According to my Lonely Planet guidebook, in the first half of the 10^th century Santiago rivaled Rome and Jerusalem as pilgrim destinations. Now about 100,000 “pilgrims” trek the route annually and about 2.5 million people visit Santiago’s holy sites.

Pilgrim accommodations come in several varieties, including modest B&B/boarding house style places in the very small towns along the route, monasteries that take in pilgrims, and hostels that provide dorm style accommodations at much lower than average rates. Most of these lower-than-market-cost places require pilgrim passports, with requisite stamps showing you are not zipping along by rental car at a pace no pilgrim on foot could maintain.

It would be nice if we could plan to walk about 10 miles a day, then stop and enjoy the rural peace, the wine and cheese, and the local food. However, the towns are not necessarily spaced that way. So our daily endeavors will range from about 8 to about 16 miles. Sixteen sounds impossible, but there is a huge network of people on the web who have done this and they say it is doable by people like us. We’ll see! It sounds too nifty to pass up the chance to try it. And the preparations are surely a major part of the experience.