Walking the Camino de Santiago
Just across a busy intersection from O Ceadoiro, a pretty decent restaurant in Arca, we find… this. Whatever it is, this was the mascot of the Jacobean Holy Year of 1993, and his name is Pelegrín, which just means “pilgrim” in the Galician language. While this is by far the largest version of him I’ve seen, at one time his […]
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During my planning time, I’ve made reservations at a handful of gîtes along the first ten days of the Via Podiensis. Some of these make perfect sense – places that fill up quickly (e.g. the monastery at Conques), or places that are choke points (Domaine du Sauvage). But then today, I got it in my head to have reservations at […]
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Based on an old marker we passed about four minutes previous, this is the village of Brea, or at least part of it. Given just how close all of these little villages are to each other – they really do blend one into the other as you walk the Camino – it could just as easily be someplace entirely different. […]
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Back in the land of the living, this is a typical pilgrims’ walk in Galicia. It’s a little blurry, but I think that’s Francine with fellow Peregrina Patty, the Irish-living American. Or possibly not. Date: 01 May 2013 Place: between Salceda and Santa Irene (Province of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) Today started: Arzúa (Province of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain)
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Over the years, I’ve posted many, many photos of the memorials to fallen pilgrims on the Camino. Pilgrims will often leave stones at these memorials in tribute to the fallen. Of all of them, this is the one that I think affects me the most. Guillermo Watt died on Camino about 27 kilometers from his goal at Santiago. That’s a […]
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Pilgrims are funny people. You’ll often find that somebody has placed some sort of token atop the Camino markers. Mostly, it’s rocks. Here, however, we have acorns sorted by size and how much of the acorn is actually present. Is it the life of the acorn? The evolution of the acorn people as a species? Acorn hats for chipmunks sorted […]
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Five minutes down the road from our previous wheels, we come to more wheels! These are a bit larger than the previous wheels we looked at. As recently as the 1990s, the carts formerly attached to these wheels were ubiquitous throughout rural Galicia. Farmers used them to haul… well, everything, really. Nowadays, it’s cheaper – not to mention faster – […]
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This photo was taken in the same yard as yesterday’s photo. You can, perhaps, see where the top of the gate came from. This wheel, however, remains a wheel for the moment. These sorts of cart wheels – sometimes with the cart still attached – may be found throughout rural Galicia, though they are usually considerably larger than this specimen. […]
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I’m pretty sure that the top of this gate was salvaged from the wheel of an old cart – more on those tomorrow – and that’s perhaps much of the charm of this rustic construction. The latch is of a kind that we saw throughout Galicia, but my attempts to procure one have so far failed. Date: 01 May 2013 […]
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We had lunch here at Casa Calzada. As I wrote in another place, the Camino is littered with various cafés and bars, and they’re especially thick on the ground for the final 40 or 50 kilometers. I think we’ve stopped at this one in Calzada on each of our Caminos. I think it’s because you become extremely conscious of the […]
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