16 October 2017
Walking day 33:
20 kilometers

Today, Monday, 16 October 2017, I walked into Santiago de Compostela and arrived at the cathedral. I made it! This is the end-point of the 800 kilometer Camino Frances.

Unfortunately, the cathedral is undergoing a multi-year cleaning, and is covered in scaffolding, but this is the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela:

My body is tired, my feet are tired and sore. I am stopping my 2017 Camino de Santiago pilgrimage here; I will not walk on the Finisterre (the “end of the earth”) as I had planned. Instead, I will be taking the train from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid to rest for a couple of days with my friends Tom and Julie from Sydney, Australia. Then I will return to Santiago de Compostela to rest for a couple more days, visit museums, attend the Pilgrim’s Mass, catch up on laundry, e-mails, and other things I can do remotely before my flights to Paris on Sunday.

Before I dwell on the end, I’ll go back to the last part of the journey, the walk into Santiago de Compostela from O Pedrouzo. Like most recent days, I started walking in the pre-dawn darkness. The sun does not rise until about 8:45 AM. I started walking just after 8, and was walking in the darkness. On the edge of town, the Camino path goes into the forest, and it was very dark. Fortunately, I could see lights ahead of me as several groups of pilgrims had headlamps or other lights,

By the time it was light enough to take photographs, we were getting close to the Santiago airport, and we could hear the early morning flights taking off. I came upon this very old, modern style way marker with the shell part of the concrete casting instead of a tile glued on (the tiles are more colorful, though)

We continued walking past the airport, and then back into the forest. I rather enjoy this part of the walk into Santiago, maybe because I expected the span between the airport and the town to be industrial. But it is quite pleasant (except for a few uphill stretches), and we even walk through a couple of small towns, isolated a bit from Santiago itself.

And then I saw a favorite way marker from my last walk on the Camino, very old style way marker.

We definitely know we are on the right way. And then we slip back into the forest for a little more of the wilderness feeling before we get to the outskirts of the large city.

I came across this small church in one of the outskirt villages before getting to Santiago. Very quaint, but closed, so I could not see inside.

Then the last real uphill in semi-forest before the final climb to Monte do Gozo.

You can see from the picture that there are many pilgrims ahead of me. I expected there to be even more than what I was seeing, but it might be that they left earlier to get to the cathedral in Santiago in time for the Pilgrim’s Mass at noon. I’m estimating that I will arrive somewhere around 12:30 or 12:40.

More pilgrims as we make the final forest walk up the last hill before Monte do Gozo.

Monte do Gozo is very well-known as the hill where the spires of the Santiago cathedral are first visible on a clear day. Today is rainy with low clouds so we will not see the cathedral from Monte do Gozo today.

After that last forest walk and hill, I came across one more small, old church. This one was also closed, so no view of the inside, and no stamp in my credential.

After a bit of a confusing walk through the suburbs of Santiago, I arrived at Monte do Gozo. There is a little chapel there, and a very small shop selling drinks, some food items, and a few souvenirs. [There are MANY souvenir shops in Santiago.]

Because a bridge over the freeway and railroad is being rebuilt or replaced or something, the walk into Santiago from Monte do Gozo is very different and longer than just a year ago. I did not walk by the park before. Also, the signage was sparse, leaving me wondering at times whether I was on the right path. There were very few pilgrims in sight, also making me a little concerned at times.

We crossed over the railroad tracks – the same line I will be traveling on tomorrow as I make my way to Madrid via train. After the railroad overpass, it seemed that we were back on the same path as before, and the signs were more evident and brass markers appeared in the sidewalks:

And as we got closer to the old city, one of the towers of the cathedral appeared between the buildings, a little hard to make out, but it is there right in the middle of the picture:

I went directly to the Pilgrim’s Office thinking that since the Mass was in progress, the queue to get the Compostela would be short. I was wrong – the queue was 2-1/2 to 3 hours. Instead, I went to find Tom near the Cathedral. We had a post-walk Coke, and then found a place called the Pilgrim’s House to print my train tickets. The Pilgrim’s House is there to assist pilgrims with a number of things, like finding lodging, directions, information, and printing train or air tickets. I’m not sure how it is funded, but they are very nice and very helpful. They only asked for a small donation for the printing. We then found my hotel and had a late lunch.

I made it to Santiago after walking for 800 kilometers across Spain on the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago.

The end was quite anti-climatic, as it was for me the first time I walked the Camino de Santiago. Why? It is simple, and many feel the same way, that what we enjoyed was the journey itself and getting to the destination meant that the journey was over. I have used this quote, a favorite of mine, about the journey before, and I’ll post it here again, because it is so apropos, the last sentence in the book “Up Country” by Nelson DeMille:

The journey home is never a direct route; it is, in fact, always circuitous,
and somewhere along the way,
we discover that the journey is more significant than the destination,
and that the people we meet along the way will be the traveling companions of our memories forever.

“The journey is more significant than the destination…” Absolutely! And as I have said before, what a great journey I have been on! I am so grateful for the journey, and the people I have met all along the way.

Next: Return to yoga in Chiang Mai, Thailand, January 2018.