Our Walk Along the Camino Frances

How Has the Camino Francés Changed in 10 Years? “Thus says the Lord: ‘… ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’”   Jeremiah 6:16   Transformations and Changes on the Way When we first walked the Camino, it was along the Camino Francés route more than a decade ago. At the time, we didn’t yet realize how profoundly it would shape our relationship with pilgrimage and the long trails that followed. Reading these early journals now, I see the wonder, naivety, and honest discovery of that first day leaving Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port as we stepped onto the Way of St. James en route to Orisson and eventually Santiago de Compostela.     In the years and 10 years that have followed since our first walk to Santiago, we have trekked and explored around the world on  trails such as:   Ontario’s Bruce Trail Newfoundland’s East Coast Trail Completed the 28,000 km-long Trans Canada Trail   Via Podiensis / GR65 Cami...

Pilgrimage Advice Camino Frances Tips for Pilgrims We have now been back home in Canada for almost a month. Home is wonderful, relaxing and welcoming for about two or three days. Then one night you wake up thinking (hoping?) you are still in an albergue, or your body becomes frustrated by sitting at a desk rather than hiking 20, 30 or 40 km at day and you begin to look up long-distance hiking trails around the world and you realize (in the words of Robert Service) "you've become the worst of the worst" and you're hooked. You are a Camino addict, and you begin the plan for next year's trek two weeks after having finished the "impossible task" of hiking 800 km. So here we are, and we have begun looking at a range of possibilities, including the Camino Norte, the Portuguese Camino, or one of the routes through France (Le Puy and Arles are the front runners). However, with all of our planning and wishful thinking aside, we also realized that we had some...

Home after the Camino Frances After the Pilgrimage to Santiago We were awake at 5 AM out of habit, but we both sat in the hotel room until 8 AM, uncertain what to do with the extra time. By 9 AM we had enjoyed a brief breakfast in the lobby, checked out, and boarded the shuttle to the Charles de Gaul airport. Checked in, we were on the 11:30 AM flight from Paris to Montreal before changing aircraft for a short jump from Montreal to Toronto.  Our flights were again long, but safe and uneventful. Without the excitement of the Camino keeping us awake as we crossed the Atlantic this time, we both slept well and arrived in Toronto at 8 PM.  Here we again gathered our luggage and waited for the Airlink bus, which took us from Toronto to the small town we currently call home. We arrived home at midnight. Here it did not take long for the silence of our own home in our own neighbourhood to get to us. Ironically, after weeks of being frustrated by the noises of others at night, a...

Fast Transit Navigating Home  Leaving Santiago de Compostela We awoke early this morning and wandered back to the cathedral to spend some time watching excited pilgrims rush into the main square. It was here that the depression began to settle in. Our trek was done, and we didn't belong in the flood of new pilgrims who came with their groups to finish their quests. Two days after arriving, it is clear the transformation from pilgrim to tourist is complete, and it is time to go home and figure out how to fit the Camino into our lives back in Canada. With all of this in mind, we began our homeward journey. We hired a taxi from our hotel to the small, clean, and modern-looking Santiago airport to catch our Air Iberia flight to Madrid.  At first, this was a stunning experience, as the taxi was travelling at a much faster speed than we had been for the past 4 - 5 weeks.  However, by the time we arrived at the airport, we had already begun to adjust back t...

Reflecting on the Camino Francés from León to Santiago “Life is a long pilgrimage from fear to love.” Paulo Coelho Leaving León did not feel like beginning the final section of the Camino Francés. We were still learning what our first long-distance pilgrimage required from us; Santiago remained more than 300 kilometres away, and several of the route's hardest climbs lay ahead. Yet we could feel the journey changing and the end approaching. The Meseta gradually gave way to the Montes de León and Bierzo, the route climbed into Galicia, and after Sarria the pilgrim community around us became almost unrecognizable. This section contained places whose names we had repeated while planning without really knowing what they would mean: Astorga, Cruz de Ferro, O Cebreiro, Sarria and finally Santiago de Compostela itself. It also contained long urban stretches, road walking, steep rocky descents, crowded cafes and nights when finding rest mattered more than seeing another monument. As f...