Author: Thom

One of the more unusual signs on the Camino, and not nearly as gaudy as some we’ve seen recently. At first I thought it was one of the ubiquitous markers to fallen pilgrims. It claims that Santiago is 194.5 km away. Is it true? Who knows. The one truism on the Camino regarding distances is that nobody knows what they […]

Francine and Rebecca walk through the El Bierzo countryside, covered in vineyards. This region is famous in Spain for its wines – and they are amazingly good – but you can’t seem to get them outside of Europe. The vines have been pruned back in a way that always makes me think of zombies, thrusting their hands up through the […]

A rare solo selfie, or possibly the portrait of some member of the Gnome species. This is what happens when you don’t shave or trim your beard or moustache for a month or so. I believe on my next Camino I’ll go ahead and carry the extra weight of a razor and a pair of scissors. Date: 24 April 2016 […]

Francine and Rebecca walk past a little chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Solitude. It is connected with a confraternity that marches in holy processions in Ponferrada during Holy Week and Easter. This expression of Catholic piety is found all over northern Spain, both in cities and smaller towns, and it’s a fantastic tradition that I wish we had in […]

We left the albergue right around dawn. I had to duck down a side street to get this photo, just to remind myself (and now you) that Galicia is a Celtic country. I mean, technically, we’re not quite in Galicia yet, but languages and culture rarely gets contained by artificial lines on a map. Date: 24 April 2016 Place: Camponaraya […]

We were so exhausted when we finally reached the Albergue Naraya that I never managed to get a photo of it. It is located very near where the village of Fuentes Nuevas seamlessly transitions into the village of Camponaraya. So instead of the albergue, here’s a photo of a church from an hour or so earlier in the day. No […]

This is the lovely little village of Fuentes Nuevas, where we had intended to spend the night. While we could find the aforementioned fountain (right at the back of the little hermitage pictured here), what we could not find was the albergue supposedly located here. So we walked on to the next village, which was fortunately just a few tens […]

Not all art on the Camino is great. Some of it, like this wide-eyed Santiago Peregrino seems utterly out of place. And that’s kind of what makes it great, that in the midst of this tableau of old stone construction and rusty signs probably dating from the Franco era we have this piece of Spanish anime. Date: 23 April 2016 […]

After a short walk through bare spring vineyards of the El Bierzo countryside, we come upon the Iglesia de San Esteban de Columbrianos. This is pretty much our first sight of the village of Columbrianos – really more of a suburb of Ponferrada. The church, in its garden-like setting, provides us a place to rest and rehydrate in the shade […]