People in the small towns near the Camino tend to walk or run on the Camino for their daily exercise or daily constitutional. Often, they are coming toward you from the opposite direction and they always offer you a nice “Buen Camino.”
Sometimes for fun when I see someone coming towards me on their daily walk just before they can get the words Buen Camino out of their mouth I like to do the following.
I put on my best poker face and with my best Castilian Spanish I say,
“Disculpe Señor, no es interés mío pero yo creo qué tal vez ud. está errado.”
(Excuse me Sir, it’s none of my business but I think you may be in error)
They then give me a quizzical look and I say,
“Santiago es para allá” (Santiago is that way) as I point in the direction that I am headed opposite the direction they are walking.
They usually get the joke chuckle a little and then wish me Buen Camino which is a lot of fun for me.
Occasionally they don’t get it and I have to tell them that I am joking which really isn’t much fun.
The other morning I got the best response of the entire trip. Outside of Astorga a man and his wife were walking on the Camino coming towards me. Just when I saw he was about to say Buen Camino, I said,
“Disculpen señores, no quiero intervenir, no es cosa mía, pero yo pienso que ustedes tal vez están equivocados”
(Excuse me guys. I don’t want to mix in, it’s not my business but I think you guys may be making a mistake.)
This guy was sharp. He knew exactly where I was going but he let me go there anyway.
He looked at me with his poker face waiting for me to explain and I said, “Santiago es para alla” as I pointed in the direction I was going opposite from the direction they were headed.
To which he responded, “Si, claro, Santiago es para allá pero Roma es para allí” and pointed in the direction he was headed, “porque no venga ud. con nosotros?”
(Yes, of course, Santiago is that way but Rome is this way. Why don’t you come with us?)
His response was so clever because he was referencing the pilgrimage to Rome which along with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem were the other important Christian pilgrimages of the Middle Ages.
I told him, “muchas gracias ahora estoy en el camino para Santiago, la siguiente vez yo les acompaño para Roma” and added “Buen Camino a Roma, uds peregrinos Romanos”
(Thank you but now I am on the Camino to Santiago next time I’ll go with you guys to Rome. Buen Camino pilgrims to Rome)
at which point he and wife said, “Buen Camino” and we all had a nice chuckle.
The fact that Christians in the middle ages would make pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem requires no explanation but why a pilgrimage to Northwestern Spain? What is Santiago?
Now you have to bear with me because I’m handicapped by the lack of a proper Catholic education but Santiago, as I understand it, is a contraction of Saint Iago meaning St. James referring to an apostle of Jesus called Saint James the Greater. There was another James (who some say may have been the brother of Jesus) who was shorter and referred to as James the Lesser.
Seems that after the crucifixion James the Greater went to Northwestern Spain to preach the gospel (spread “the good news”) to the pagans who inhabited what was then the farthest reaches of the known world possibly with limited success.
In about the year 44 he returned to Jerusalem where Herod promptly ordered him beheaded. The legend is that his remains were placed on a rudderless unmanned vessel (there are other versions but I like this one best) that made its way, likely guided by angels, across the Mediterranean Sea through the Straights of Gibraltar and to the Northwest of Spain where they made ground. They were then carried inland and hidden at a place that we now know as Santiago de Compostela where they remained undiscovered for going on 8 centuries.
In the year 815 or so, either a shepherd boy or a monk named Pelayo saw a strange light emanating from that spot and found them. Word spread quickly about the discovery and King Alfonso II, King of Asturias which at that time included Galicia, traveled on horseback from the Capital Oviedo, confirmed that the remains were indeed those of Saint James the Greater and the Camino Santiago was born.
He ordered the construction of a tomb and small church at that place which by the 11th Century had been replaced by a larger Cathedral. The route taken by King Alfonso II, the first person to make the pilgrimage to Santiago, still exists and is called the Camino Primitivo. By the 11th Century numerous Caminos had spring up from every part of the known world because millions of Christians everywhere were making pilgrimage to Santiago.
The dark ages, the black plague, the Protestant Reformation, multiple economic crisis in Europe, World War I and II, all contributed to the decline so that by the second half of the 20th Century only a small number of devout Christians were making the pilgrimage to Santiago.
The Camino was reborn in the 1980’s when it was declared the first European Cultural Route by the Council of Europe and was also named one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.
Today, hundreds of thousands of people for religious, spiritual and other reasons make their way to Santiago de Compostela every year. Most travel by foot, some by bicycle, and a few travel like Alfonso II on horseback.
I am not a cynic about this legend. It makes perfect sense to me that the remains of James the Greater would have made their way back to Galicia because it’s customary and fitting for the remains of an apostle or preacher to be buried in the place of his ministry.
I decidedly don’t not believe this legend.
At our farm in Vermont, there are segments of ancient roads that still exist the oldest of which I can locate on a map from the 1820’s.
Almost every day when I’m in Vermont I either walk or ride my horse on that road and it always gives me pause that the road was traveled nearly 200 years ago so I can’t help but to pause when traveling the Camino.
Seems to me that whether you are a person of Christian faith, an adherent of another belief, an atheist, an agnostic or an outright apostate traveling a route that millions have travelled for going on 12 centuries has to be inspiring and even more so considering the millions who did so because they had faith in the existence of something greater than themselves.
So back to today. The sunrise was gorgeous.
My horse is a 9 year old Hispano Arab named Pícaro and we got along great from the start.
There are only two other riders, Ricardo, an Italian man from Florence and Maria, a Canadian woman from Vancouver. I didn’t know much about either cause I was late to dinner the night before and wasn’t feeling very sociable but they seem very nice. Certainly both confidant riders.
Marcelino and his cousin Rafa take turns leading the group. Winston Churchill said, “there is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man” and that’s certainly true for me.
We left O’cebreiro at about 9:15, cause I was late, rode for a couple of hours to Alto de Poio, where we stopped for coffee, and then continued for a couple of hours to Triacastela where we had lunch, about 24 kms in 5 hours or so.
It was glorious, no hyperbole, the views were amazing.
And we kept crossing paths with pilgrims I had met over the previous 9 days of walking. My community of familiar faces that I thought I wouldn’t see again.
Many waving, calling me by name and saying “Buen Camino”
It was great. Lunch was fun too. The lady makes the hugest tortilla española I ever saw, 40 eggs and 5 kilos of potatoes.
After lunch we took the southern option to Samos which most pilgrims on foot skip because it adds extra kilometers. Very different than the morning ride, we rode on ancient and little used carriage trails through thick forest by the banks of the River Orobio. We rode through an almost abandoned medieval town called San Cristobo which has an ancient mill and church (10th Century), a number of houses, farm buildings and numerous other stone structures but only 4 inhabitants. Marcelino told me the whole place including the church could be had for 100,000 euros.
I don’t have pictures because it was mostly through mixed woodlands with not much sunlight.
We then approached Samos on a rise with a great view of the enormous restored monastery and surrounding botanical park and grounds.
I was having such a great time. I was thinking that this was the best riding holiday that we ever had. And there it was, the dreaded first person plural personal pronoun, “we” and I couldn’t avoid the avalanche. “We” hadn’t come on this riding holiday. There was no more “we” just me and it just wasn’t fair.
I’ve always liked to bring up the rear when riding in a group so the others didn’t see me wiping away tears.
After more than 7 hours on horseback covering about 35 kms we dismounted put the horses out in a makeshift pasture, checked into a lovely hotel, showered and had dinner together.
Turns out Ricardo, divorced with two daughters, retired a year ago from his medical career as a neuro surgeon. I asked him if he operated on gbm to which he said “yes but it doesn’t work.” Maria’s real name is Heather but it doesn’t translate well into Spanish so she’s using her middle name.
Tomorrow we are starting early riding first to Saria and then to Portamarin covering a few more kilometers than today and maybe a bit more time in the saddle.
So today was great I rode the Camino on horseback like the first pilgrim King Alfonso II but actually he started in Oviedo so I’m thinking that tobalance things out, I’d better come back one day and do the Camino Primitivo from Oviedo because as the Spanish saying (dicho) goes:
Quien va Santiago y no al Salvador
Visita el criado y no el señor
Buen Camino