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...

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Mary Oliver, “Sometimes,” from Devotions Learning to Notice on Our First Camino Long before walking and observing nature became inseparable parts of our travels, we set out from Saint Jean Pied de Port on our first Camino. We were not yet experienced long-distance walkers, nor were we keeping careful records of every bird, plant or animal encountered along the way. We had come to the Camino Francés largely because we needed to regain a sense of balance in our lives. Everything about the journey was new: carrying our belongings on our backs, sleeping among strangers in albergues, following yellow arrows across a country and allowing the routines of long-distance walking to determine the shape of each day. Years later, after returning to the Camino many times and walking thousands of kilometres on trails across Canada and Europe, we revisited the blogs, journals and photographs from that first pilgrim...

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 a 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 s...