On the Road to Santiago…
For years I’ve wanted to do the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compestela in Spain, and the time has finally come. Starting on April 21st I’m going to try the most popular Camino Frances route: this goes from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, just inside the French border, over the Pyrenees, through Pamplona, Burgos, Leon and into Santiago 780 km (500 miles) later. The plan is to take around 31 days, but I have not booked the return trip as I have no idea how it will go.
Santiago is supposedly the burial place for St James the Apostle and has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries; the route is lined with medieval buildings displaying the scallop shell, the symbol of St James and the pilgrimage. There has been a recent resurgence of interest and the pilgrimage is no longer specifically Catholic: the traditional certificate or compostela is given to those who have walked at least the last 100km and whose purpose is ‘spiritual’. The traditional pilgrim wore a black cloak and carried a staff and gourd like the man on the left, but they won’t let me on the Ryanair flight to Biarritz looking like that.
I’ve joined the Confraternity of St James which provides a Pilgrim’s Record: this needs to be stamped each day at the Refugios along the route that provide free or very cheap accommodation in dormitories. This is a Holy Year, which means huge numbers of pilgrims and ‘no room at the inn’, so probably there will be many nights on the floor. The Camino web discussion groups are obsessed with packing lists, and I’ve got everything weighed to the gram and have got down below 8kg on my back – medieval pilgrims didn’t have Gore-Tex boots but they also didn’t have to bother with digital camera batteries and charger.
There will be boring, tiring and lonely times, so it would be cheering if I was raising money for something worthwhile. Two years ago I was in India on a pilgrimage to the main Buddhist site of Bodhgaya (I’m nothing if not an ecumenical pilgrim.) I was really fortunate to visit the Bahujan Hitay Girl’s Hostel in Nagpur in central India, which enables poor ex-Untouchable rural girls to get an education: the girls were wonderful and the staff so dedicated and they all had so little (I took the photo on the left). The Karuna Trust have agreed that anything I raise goes towards extending the hostel from 50 up to 100 girls. My Just Giving account is easiest – otherwise send me a cheque made out to ‘Karuna Trust’ with a covering note to say you are a taxpayer so they can get Gift Aid. £10 works out at only 2p a mile!
I’ll be sending bulletins when I can get to the Internet, and will produce an illustrated record after (justifying lugging the digital camera). If you want to hear from me on the road, reply to spiegelbull at-symbol ntlworld.com (Replace at-symbol by @, I’ve not used the ‘@‘ to avoid my email being on a website and hence generating spam).
Many thanks!
David Spiegelhalter April 2004