El Camino de Santiago de Compostela

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You can look at photos, read books, upload Blogs and hear stories but there is nothing like the actual being there and this is certainly very true for the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the 790 kilometre pilgrimage from St Jean Pied du Port at the foothills of the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in the Galicia region of Spain.

As much as the start point for El Camino de Santiago de Compostela is St Jean Pied de Port, we started our Camino a few days earlier in Sarlat France with a pleasant pre Camino celebration.

There were a few of us celebrating a friends birthday and we were all staying in a renovated 3 story home in the old town area of Sarlat, France. Here we were only a few moments walk from the famous Sarlat markets with all the wonderful fresh Dordogne produce, great coffee shops, bakeries and foie gras as far as the eye can see.

It's rather fun to go and get inspired about dinner plans with a visit to the markets and a detour home via the local wine outlets. However, we were in Sarlat for more then just celebrating and a final walk and tune up of our potential gear was in order, so we joined Rosie (the birthday girl) for a reasonably paced 12k walk with our new backpacks stuffed with about 7k. We also had the opportunity to quiz Rosie on her Camino experiences and endeavour to get a better picture of what we were likely to experience ourselves.

It was time to move on, however, and getting a lift to the Gare de Sarlat-la-Caneda gave us an easy start for the day trip to Pamplona. Mind you there are no trains at the moment travelling through Sarlat as the tracks were under repair, so it was a bus to the next station then a pretty ride on a narrow gauge railway track through the French countryside to Bordeaux. It was here our lack of recent travelling almost caught us out. Coming into Bordeaux we got off one stop too early. We had already heaved on our backpacks and started to exit the platform when we realised what we had done. It was a near call making it back onto the train before the automatic doors locked shut. There was an equally close call at Hendaye, on the French Spanish border. There we had to buy seat reservations in order to clear security so I quickly joined then end of the queue at the ticket office. Reservations secured we then had to rush through another security check and have all bags x-rayed before boarding the train. (There’s an ongoing security concern in the Basque country.)

Ahh, but then it all got easy and we both enjoyed looking out the train windows at the beautiful Navarra landscape. We were really humbled when we realised that we will soon be walking in all of this beauty at our own leisurely pace. My mantra for the Camino, “As one foot leaves, the other arrives,” is firmly implanted into my attitude.

Our trip to Pamplona was a logistic exercise as we had to considerably downsize our backpacks. There was no way we try to walk the 790 kilometres with our 16 kilo travelling packs. 6-7 kilos is the recommendation. The solution was to buy two small walking packs, and pack the barest of necessities into them. Then it was a case of packing up the rest of our stuff in post office approved boxes and sending them to Santiago to wait at the post office there for us. “Lista Correos de Santiago de Compostela.”

We spent the night in Pamplona and had time to explore the city the following day prior to catching our bus to Roncesvalles and then a shared taxi to St Jean Pied de Port. Again we had the opportunity to see snatches of the beautiful yet rugged countryside that would become part of our journey during the following days.

Arriving in St Jean, we agreed on our accommodation. It was after some mutual negotiation that we chose the Albergue de Peregrinos. It was to be our first try at staying in an albergue. I am somewhat nervous of the idea of staying in Albergues, as I have read lots of stories of noisy dorm rooms filled with up to 100 bunk beds half a meter apart. Glenda on the other hand is keen for the true Camino experience, meaning staying in a public albergues for some of our walk.

Luckily, the Albergue de Peregrinos at St. Jean was a great soft opening for me. We got to share a 2 bunk bedroom not a 60 bed dorm. The albergue had a clothes line and a wash basin, two absolute must haves for those of us travelling light. There was also a dinning hall and by sitting down with our fellow guests that evening for the “Peregrinos Menu” Glenda and I officially became Pilgrims.

As there was a high possibility of bad weather for the first leg of our trek over the Pyrenees we stayed an extra day in St. Jean which gave us the opportunity to see more of this pretty French village, including a long lunch to celebrate our upcoming adventure. It also gave us time to sort out our Credencials, (Pilgrims Passport.) The credencial, is a small cardboard booklet that you carry throughout your trek and that is stamped along the way (usually at the hostel where you stay) as proof that you really have walked the Camino. In Santiago de Compostela after you hand in your completed credencial, you are then given your 'compostela,' the certificate proving you have walked the Camino de Santiago. We joined a line of pilgrims at the Accueil St Jacques, 39 rue de la Citadelle and shortly had our Credencials. We also bought a shell each to sew onto our backpacks and finally I bought a pair of walking sticks after having tried out Glenda’s. I wasn’t sure about these initially, surely this is cheating! However they are amazing, they made walking easier and helped my use and exercise my upper body for the ensuing 4 weeks.

We joined new pilgrims at our dinner that evening and took advantage of a good tip from an experienced pilgrim and that was to trek over the Pyrenees with just one backpack and send the other one onto Roncesvalles, with Suzette, who has a little business providing just that service. As the first stage of the Camino is possibly the hardest we treated ourselves to this luxury.

So on the 6^th of May, 2011 after a nice breakfast of coffee, baguettes and fruit we set off down the rue de la Citadelle, stopping momentarily at the local boulangerie to pick up our pre ordered lunch packs. The heading down didn’t last very long and within minutes of leaving the city gates we were already breaking into a bit of a sweat from the steep climb. Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-languageƐ mso-fareast-languageƐ mso-bidi-languageƐ}

We shortly caught up with a fellow Aussi, who was rather impressed by our very light single backpack and as we continued up the steep climb, he was becoming more and more impressed. Having just flown in the day before and also only several months in recovery from heart surgery, he decided to take our advice and send his backpack ahead as well. He hurried back down into town so he could catch Suzette’s delivery service. He eventually caught up with us just before Roncesvalles and thanked us for urging him to take the easier option. By that stage we already become a “family” of about 7 and all ended up on the same floor in the new Albergue at Roncesvalles. We also all shared a table for dinner and were joined by several others from countries near and far.

We had learned very quickly that the Camino is a conduit to fast friendships!

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Photos

Early Beginings
St. Jean already a few kilometers away