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Take a hike! Wednesdays with The Village, 8 [1]
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Date: 2022-08-03
The Spanish flag
I enjoy hiking, but the past 10 months we’ve been training to hike the last 100+kilometers of the Camino de Santiago. If you do 100k you can get a certificate at the end — and that really appeals to my competitive side ;)
Here’s some more info about the Camino from Wikipedia.
As the citation states, the pilgrimage has many routes. We are doing a portion of the French route.
The Camino Francés, or French Way, is the most popular. The Via Regia is the last portion of the (Camino Francés).[citation needed] Historically, because of the Codex Calixtinus, most pilgrims came from France: typically from Arles, Le Puy, Paris, and Vézelay; some from Saint Gilles. Cluny, site of the celebrated medieval abbey, was another important rallying point for pilgrims and, in 2002, it was integrated into the official European pilgrimage route linking Vézelay and Le Puy. Most Spanish consider the French border in the Pyrenees the natural starting point. By far the most common, modern starting point on the Camino Francés is Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, on the French side of the Pyrenees, with Roncesvalles on the Spanish side also being popular.[30] The distance from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela through León is about 800 km (500 mi).
x Did you know that the Camino de Santiago is not just one route, but a network of routes?
Throughout the middle ages, thousands of pilgrims walked from their homes to make their pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. This paved the way for many different routes across Europe! pic.twitter.com/elAtq9K4eo — Follow the Camino (@followthecamino) July 14, 2022
Our hike/walk starts in the town of Sarria in northern Spain. We will hike for 5 days straight, take a day off, then hike for 3 more before we reach the town and cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. When it’s all said and done the section we’re doing is closer to 113k or about 70 miles. The first 5 days we average 7.5 miles/day. The last 3 days are longer and flatter; and average 10.8 miles/day.
We understand the challenge for us personally. We have achy joints already, but we’ve done a lot of hiking these past months in the open space areas surrounding our little town. We’ve hiked 1400’ up, along with routine altitude gains of 800’. We’ve hiked over 6 miles with our packs and have reached the point where we can do that kind of hike and barely feel any after effects. Personally, I’m ready for it to be over, lol.
Because of our age and desire/need for comfort and privacy, we are not staying at hostels, but hotels along the route. We’ve booked with a company that provides all the route info we need, books the hotels and moves our luggage every day to that night’s hotel. We will be carrying small packs with water, snacks, a change of boots/shoes, and maybe rain gear if needed.
As I mentioned at the beginning, if you complete 100k or more you can get a certificate at the Cathedral. You have a choice of a fancy one if you’re a religious pilgrim or a simple one for everyone else. I’ve already decided that because I attended Catholic schools for 11 years that I will declare myself a religious pilgrim — I can be absolved of that little white lie if I attend a mass, so I’m a-ok with that ;)
I’ll share our story here, as I have the diary the day after our break day after day 5.
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