A First Look at Galicia

Took the train this morning from Santiago de Compostela this morning to Ourense, ie, from where we will end our walk, to where we start. A 45 minute ride. The train ride was, roughly, along the route we'll be walking for the next several days.

The part of Spain we're in, Galicia, is beautiful. Rolling, wooded land with farms and small villages, and green as the dominant color in the countryside.. This is very different from what we saw around Madrid, where the browns that you might associate with the central and southern parts of the country.

Taking pictures through the window of a moving train doesn't necessarily give you the b

est shots, but there are two things in this photo that are important.

First, the rainbow. Beautiful, and welcoming us to our walk. But the problem with a rainbow is that, yes, it's raining ahead. The last couple of days have had showers early and late in the evening, with scattered clouds and sun for the afternoon. Temperatures have been on the cool side. The forecast is for pretty much the same the rest of the week. What that means for us pilgrims, is that the temperatures will be great, but we're going to have to deal with some rain. It's not like we haven't been through that in Ireland.

The other thing you can see in the picture is the green, rolling countryside. Green is good, and rolling is scenic. But rolling means up and down, and that's important to simple pilgrims like us, who have to walk the ups and downs.

We'll start tomorrow out of Ourense, which is in a valley surrounded by these green hills. The elevation profile of tomorrow's walk starts off flat, then after a couple of miles takes a sharp spike up. It looks like around 1500 feet of elevation gain over a pretty short distance. One guide book says the grade reaches 19 percent for a ways. A 19 percent grade is work. Marty and I are already calling it Gammy Hill, after an earlier adventurer.

But the better news is that after getting to the top of the grade, it's pretty level for the rest of tomorrow's walk. Supposedly.      

Philadelphia Stories

Right now, we're in Philadelphia, laying over for a few hours before the flight to Madrid.

Time for putting together a blog entry. This entry is about a couple of legends associated with the

Camino de Santiago. Since these walks to Santiago de Compostela have been religious pilgrimages for hundreds and hundreds of years, there are a lot of legends associated.

The symbol of The Way is the scallop shell. There are a lot of explanations of how this came to be, including the body of St. James arriving at Santiago in a boat covered with scallops. And, the scallop shell is the symbol of St. James. It's also suggested that the lines of the shell converging at a single point reflect the routes of the pilgrims converging at Santiago de Compostela. On a practical note, it's believed that the scallop shells carried by religious pilgrims identified them as such, keeping them from harassment by any number of bad guys. Finally, the shells served as a cup for food, water, and wine.

Today, the scallop shell is used on all the directional signs for the way – that and a yellow arrow. A lot of today's pilgrims, religious or not, carry a scallop shell in or on their pack.

And here's a piece of trivia... Coquille St. Jacques, the popular French way of preparing scallops, would translate as scallops ala St. James.

Marty and I are both carrying scallop shells. Mine is larger. I need more wine.

Another legend is regarding the Milky Way. Beginning in medieval times, it was thought that the Milky Way was formed by the dust raised by pilgrims on the Camino. The popular Spanish name for the Milky Way is “Camino de Santiago”, and the “Compostela” in the name of the town Santiago de Compostela translates as “field of stars.”  

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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