Author: Thom

Last night I caught the Vigil Mass at the Basilica, and afterwards Tara, the sisters Ava and Marty, and I went out for dinner. It was a lovely conversation with friends old and new. Today I walked through the beautiful valley of El Bierzo. I began in Ponferrada, its modern capital city, and ended in Villafranca del Bierzo, its medieval […]

Today I had two objectives: be at Cruz de Ferro when it was light, and arrive in Ponferrada in one piece. Spoiler alert: yes! However, it was a long day, longer than it had any right to be. So to start at the beginning, what is Cruz de Ferro? Cruz de Ferro is, as the name suggests, an iron cross. It is […]

On this day, 13 October in the year 1307, the Order of the Knights Templar was suppressed. That day was a Friday the 13th as well. The Templars loom large on the Camino, because for much of the 12th and 13th centuries they maintained a series of fortresses along the route to protect pilgrims from bandits, raiders, and the depredations […]

We had a generous dinner at the albergue last night with perhaps two dozen pilgrims. We left a little late this morning, at 7:10, mostly due to my having a coffee half the size of my head at breakfast. Soon after leaving the village, we left the highway for the traditional gravel road running parallel to the highway, sometimes closer, […]

Vespers and Mass yesterday evening with the Benedictine sisters ended with the priest conferring individual blessings on each of us pilgrims.  Last night was just your average Tuesday night in León. That means that the streets were full of people talking and laughing in the outside terraces of cafés and bars, couples walking arm in arm through the streets, the […]

For no good reason, I was awake and packed before 6:30 AM. We left at 7 AM precisely, and soon Tara and I were walking through urban sprawl. It was cold enough that I wore gloves.  At some point, the Camino passed a picnic area and veered right, following the usual wide white gravel path. In the darkness, I couldn’t […]

Last night after a large communal dinner, which we ate outside in the plaza in front of the albergue, a group of us went up to a nearby hill to watch the incredible sunset. There’s an arch of stone and brick up on the hill, which is all that’s left of the original village church. The story goes that the […]

We had a great dinner last night in a dining hall full of pilgrims. The food was some of the best I’ve had in Spain, and the company, from all over the world, was engaging. I stayed up rather later than I intended. Today, most of the lands that I walked through were once controlled by the Order of the […]

Last evening after Vespers I had a delightful time touring the church of Santa María de Blanca with Vicky from New Mexico. I first met her back in Estella when we were both trying to get into the same locked church.  She’s a comparative religions professor, and together we deciphered some things about the fabric of the church, including the […]