Category: Ruminations

Today was not a great day. It poured rain, I only managed about 17 km, and I’m homesick. After the monastery tour yesterday, Martha from Brooklyn and I headed over to a tiny chapel on the outskirts of town. This is the oldest part of the monastery complex, though it is not physically located at the “new” monastery, which was […]

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For such a relatively small town, Villafranca del Bierzo is full of churches, monasteries, and convents. This evening, I attempted to visit some of them. First I tried to get into the 17th century Convent de la Anunciada, which contains the tomb of Saint Lawrence of Brindisi, but  I was ultimately unsuccessful. Since this is still an actual Cistercian convent, I […]

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On this memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi, I am mindful that the great Saint also undertook this pilgrimage back in 1214. I was out of the hotel just after 6 AM. I had to walk back across the river and to the Cathedral to get back on the Camino route. The way out of town was relatively straightforward, as […]

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Yesterday after arriving in the city, I spent an unconscionable amount of time running errands. I have a room here for two nights, which allows me to completely empty and rearrange my backpack. Somewhere, tucked deep in a pocket, I found a tiny folded up map of some unknown town in France. The errands included replacing some missing or lost […]

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Today was my 40th day walking on this pilgrimage. It seems a significant day, though the actual walking portion was not too long.  I was up and packed fairly early, but breakfast options along the route were a little limited. I left to hit a nearby panderia, but they didn’t open until 7 AM. It turns out that this was […]

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Today was a lesson in listening to your body. Or, rather, a lesson in listening to your foot and not your stomach. Or perhaps, today was a series of lessons that I need to learn, or remember. Jacopo and I shared dinner last night with a Canadian couple, Etienne and Colleen. I immediately noticed that both of them wore the […]

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Serge sure puts on a spread! Dinner with the other pilgrims in the gîte was enormous, and enormously fun, even if most of the conversation was in a language I can’t understand. Breakfast was similarly generous, and I had a hard time getting out the door. We finally left about 7:00 AM.  My goal today was the city of Moissac, […]

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We sang vespers with the sisters last night in Gramat. I have prayed Vespers frequently in both English and Latin (and more usually, a combination of the two), but this is only the second time I’ve prayed them in French.  This is the mother house of their order, and the sisters here were few in number and gray haired. This […]

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Today was a day of beautiful forest trails and way too much roadwalking.  I left the gîte at about 6:20 this morning in search of a café for breakfast. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and I hoped to luxuriate a bit with a cup of café au lait and a pastry. It was actually chilly enough that I […]

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