We had exactly three weeks to arrive in Santiago de Compostela, the third largest pilgrimage site after Rome and Jerusalem. My friend and I are not religious at all, so our trip through Spain was exclusively a personal challenge with a lot of ups and downs. We wanted to test how far we could go without anything else than our shoulders could carry. In the beginning, our backpacks had been a way bigger challenge than the walking itself, but after some time we got used to the weight on our shoulders. In the end our feet turned out to be the biggest problem and there were several other difficulties we had to overcome, of which more later.
 |
| © http://www.outdooractive.com/ http://img.oastatic.com/img/2151944523217760135/dicht-draengen- sich-die-haeuser-und-engen-gassen-um-die-kirche-von-hontanas.jpg |
We divided our trip into two big stages: the way through Castile until León, the last major city on the Way of St. James, and the remaining 300 kilometres that led through the autonomous community of Galicia. Because 500 kilometres were quite a distance to go in the stretch of three weeks, we planned to take the bus after León. Back than we actually wanted to skip about 50 kilometres, but since we had no idea how exhausting this trip was going to be, we had to skip twice as much in the end. But that wasn’t a heavy setback, considering the great distance still left to go.
At the beginning of our pilgrimage we covered about 25 kilometres each day. We thought that this distance would be a good and manageable average but already on the fourth day we were forced to slow down a little, because our feet started to hurt and we were pretty tired as well. After about fifteen kilometres we decided to call it a day, grab some food and start earlier the next morning, but our plan didn’t quite work out as expected. When we got up the next morning, we already felt that it was going to be a tough day. After an hour of walking we both had problems with our feet and every single step hurt, so we wanted to take a break in the next village already. Frómista was just five kilometres away, but we hardly managed to get there. We were so badly in pain that we went to see the next pharmacy for painkillers and didn’t move for about an hour. After breakfast we took another pill precautionary to survive the remaining day and because the painkillers worked surprisingly well, the following days turned out to be way more relaxed. Although we were exhausted after every single march, we started to enjoy our trip and we discovered lots of beautiful sights on our way to Santiago de Compostela.
 |
| © http://www.outdooractive.com/ http://img.oastatic.com/img/2160951726767466375/von- castrum-sigerici-sind-nur-noch-ruinen-vorhanden.jpg |
There was really not much to find in Castile, except for crop fields and very few small villages every once in a while. Sometimes the landscape was really frustrating because everything looked the same and we absolutely lost our sense of time. Although there were just a few people living in the small villages of Castile, they always had a beautiful church or cloister with impressive architecture. We also visited some derelict ruins that had probably been churches or castles once. There were sometimes just a few walls left with weather-worn decorations, windows and immense arches. On our way, there had also been a lot of chapels where the local minister prepared food and hot beverages for exhausted pilgrims and no matter how secluded the villages had been, there was always at least one beverage dispenser with ice-cold coke. They were even standing somewhere outside in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty weird sometimes.
To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment