Doing the Way Our Way

Welcome to this year’s walking adventure. This year Marty Szabo and I are taking on a portion of The Way of Saint James (El Camino de Santiago), in Spain. “The Way” actually encompasses many different walking routes, all of them ancient pilgrimage routes. Some of these start in other countries, but all of them wend across Spain, ending in northwest Spain at the town of Santiago de Compostela

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According to legend, the remains of St. James were carried by boat from Jerusalem to Santiago de Compostela and buried in the Cathedral there. Beginning in the 9^th century the Cathedral became the goal of religious pilgrims from across Europe.

The most popular route (today, and historically) by far is the Camino Frances, running across northern Spain. Historically it’s the route that funneled pilgrims from all across Europe through Spain to Santiago.  Walking the Camino de Santiago has become increasingly popular in recent years and to put the Camino Frances’ popularity in perspective, there have been 117,000 pilgrims (walkers, bikers, and horse riders) arrive in Santiago so far this year from the Camino Frances. If you saw the movie “The Way”, with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, you saw Martin Sheen walk the Camino Frances. You also saw him carrying all of his belongings on his back and spend each night in one of the many auberges (hostels) along the Camino Frances.

You might not be surprised to learn that we’re not doing The Way that way. First, we’re not walking the Camino Frances. We’ll be walking a portion of the Via de La Plata, the pilgrimage route that runs a generally northerly route 600 miles from Southern Spain (Seville), to Santiago. It’s a far less traveled route, running through Galicia, one of the most scenic areas of northern Spain. The small stretch we’re doing starts at Ourense, crosses Galicia and gets us to Santiago several days later.

   

In addition, Marty and I decided that staying in auberges with 50 or more of our closest pilgrim friends was not really our way of doing The Way. We’ll be staying in hotels and inns along The Way, not in bunk beds. And, separate rooms. Oh, and instead of carrying all our belongings on our backs, we’ll be helping the local economies and having a delivery service forward our bags from one hotel to the next. We're experienced hikers, after all, and that counts for something

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