“Buen Camino”

 

What is the Camino de Santiago? It’s a multidirectional route that spans from the entire continent of Europe and converges in a single place, where St. James (Santiago) was buried. It started in the 9th century and remains to this day, 1,400 years later, a powerful and popular pilgrimage.  From what I’ve read, people do “The Way” for many reasons, such as purification, self-realization or salvation.  It is a unique journey in that it combines self and group, earth and heavens, all while hoping to be transformed along the way.  So…needless to say, I was prepared to see (and feel?) some pretty amazing things.

The scallop shell (above) is the marker for the Pilgrim’s path. It is the symbol of the Camino because it terminates at the end of the earth (the sea, which has scallops) but also because the 6 main paths of the pilgrims’ journey are represented by the seams in the shell. You can see these pillars throughout the Camino, guiding the pilgrims to their final stop.  (I was going to say final resting place, but then decided that was macabre. After all, few pilgrims these days actually die on their journey…but some do. After seeing all the unhealthy looking pilgrims taking smoking breaks on the trail, I wasn’t too surprised that some still do die. 

We struggled our way through the throngs of celebrating pilgrims to the stone which marks the beginning of our own backwards journey to France, 500 miles away. 

Before we encountered any pilgrims, just as we left the busy city behind, we stumbled upon a newborn foal and his mama. Both were curious about us and came over to greet us.  Little did we know how often we’d be greeted along the way.

I was led to believe that the “way” we would be taking would be on the road. Thus I traded in my mountain bike for a super cool hybrid road bike. Dennis has his mountain bike, for which I immediately became extremely jealous as we rode miles of all different types of rough terrain, from dirt to mudd to rock to ancient pavers to one lane roads to a super highway. All in the first day. (The super highway was a navigational error, made immediately obvious by the speed limit signs (120 km per hour) and the long strident honking of cars telling us, as if we didn’t already know, that we were on a dangerous super highway. We rode as fast as we could to the next exit to get on the frontage road we were meant to be on.)

At first I was upset about riding on the dirt with my skinny tires, but after the super highway, this was a delight. I’m pretty sure Dennis planned it this way.

Eating (actually finding) food is usually such an ordeal on these trips, but the Camino has created a number of stopping points for the Pilgrims to find nourishment (beyond the spiritual type).  We cruise by most of these, jealously watching the Pilgrims drinking beer and partying (and often smoking, thus my comment above regarding those who die along the route). Many of the pilgrims are laden with backpacks and camping gear, but there’s an equal number who are wearing small day packs. Those are the ones who are doing the Camino with a tour company, and have their luggage moved from hotel to hotel. They even take them from the trail to their hotel and back. But even these modern day pilgrims are walking huge amounts of miles, and we can’t help but feel happy (was going to say “superior”, but that’s not a very Pilgrim way of thinking now, is it?) when we careen by them at 10x the pace. (My favorite line from the movie “The Way” is when one of the characters sees a bike going by and says, “A bike??? We could be doing this on a bike??!!”)

The bike route of the Camino Frances (the French Way) is along Eurovelo 3. Eurovelo is a system of bike routes carefully curated to select the best biking paths through popular parts of Europe.  The Eurovelo 3 follows a lot of the walking trail but also diverges when the route is deemed more appropriate elsewhere. 

 

Lots of cold and drizzle these first few days, as you can see by the ubiquitous pilgrim ponchos. On the positive side, you don’t sweat so you can skip daily clothes washing and save on sunscreen. Because we are going the opposite direction, we are continually greeted by 90% of the pilgrims, happy at last to make eye contact with someone other than their friends or themselves and the unfolding landscape. We, on the other hand, are continually obligated to reply, or at the very least, smile. Thus I spend a good amount of time on the road trying to think of clever rejoinders but never quite achieving their same level of exuberance.  Our fallback remains the most common, and heartfelt, reply: Buen Camino.  Literally, have a good trip. But really, it means so much more. 

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