About the Camino de Santiago and this Account

Medieval pilgrim, Museo das Peregrinacions, Santiago de Compostela

Ohio, April 30, 2009

For about 1200 years, pilgrims have been making their way – their camino – to Santiago de Compostela in Galician Spain, to reap the benefits of visiting the relics of the Apostle James.  St. Francis is said to have made the trip.  Chaucer’s Wife of Bath speaks of having done it.  John Adams, on a trip to France through Spain in 1779, did not go to Santiago and regretted it.   In 1989, Pope John Paul II visited Santiago.   There is little need here to tell the big history of the Camino de Santiago.  That can easily be found elsewhere.  Wikipedia has a nice article on it.

What follows is the account of two American Protestant Christians who walked their own pilgrimage starting  in Burgos and ended up in Santiago 25 days and 500km (300 miles) later.

The text of this account is taken largely from my journal.  I’ve written it for two reasons.  The first is that I have enjoyed reading other pilgrims’ accounts online of their own Camino experience – both before I went and after I came back.   So I think that maybe someone might like reading this one.  The second reason is that it’s been an exercise in reflection for me six months after the fact.

I have purposely arranged this blog chronologically, making it like a story, the earliest entry first. (I edited the publishing dates to make it work out this way.  It just reads better, I think. To move ahead at the bottom of a page, just click on “earlier entries.”)   If you do read any of this, I hope you enjoy it.  Maybe you’ll go on your own Camino someday.  It was well worth it to me.  I’d do it again.

After three days in Barcelona we took the overnight train to Burgos from where we began.

We began in Burgos and finished in Santiago, August 17 - September 12, 2008.