The final day of the Camino. Or to look at it another way, our first false ending point. Pam and I are planning to hike to Fisterra and Muxia which are both potential ending spots. The Camino is right around 500 miles and if we go to Fisterra and Muxia, we are looking at about another 75 miles of walking. At best, Santiago will be a resting spot for us before we finish.
The real focus of the day is getting to Santiago and seeing everyone who has became a part of our trail family for the last month. The walk, itself, is inconsequential today. Only around 12 miles and nothing too exciting.
About 2.5 miles up the trail, we go through a tunnel under the highway and emerge to find a cafe where we stop for some breakfast. Everyone is fairly quiet and subdued. The day hikers are a little irritating and I have really come to despise bicyclists. After our breakfast, we all just power on to the end.
We stopped at one other cafe for a quick drink and saw a few people we knew, but it’s really just a blur. By the time we got to San Marcos on the outskirts of Santiago, we were starting to drag a bit but we just wanted to get the walking over with. We went to up to the pilgrims monument to get our first views of Santiago de Compostela. George was starting to fall back a bit at this point. He caught up and rested while we looked around.
Richard and Shaun took off and headed into Santiago. We hung back with George and started down the hill on our final road walk of the Camino. There was a huge military style bunk complex to our right. This is the largest Albergue on the trail. In it’s minimal capacity, it sleeps 400, but when the Camino is at its most crowded in July and August, it will hold up to 3,000 people a night. George is hearing conflicting information that attendance is down almost 20% this year which we find hard to believe.
When we got in town, we found a paper confirming that there is a 20% attendance difference this year–an increase. Emilio Estevez doesn’t strike me as a Hollywood powerhouse, but his movie, “The Way” is still making a huge impact on Northern Spain. The increased attendance is showing up in the form of new highways, reworked villages along the route, new hand paved streets in little villages, and an increase in Albergues, restaurants, and stores along the Camino Frances.
When we got to the edge of town, Richard was waiting for us. Shaun kept powering on because of his knee, but he’s only a few minutes ahead of us. George is out of water and Pam is having to pee. I’m hotter than hell and just need a sit down for a few minutes. We’ve still got 2 1/2 miles of city walking to go before we make it to the Cathederal. I don’t want to finish the trail crawling on my hands and knees, with George’s tongue swollen and hanging out of his mouth, and Pam peeing her pants with a trail of urine behind her. Richard is doing pretty well, but he is sweating profusely and wringing sweat out of his tissue every few feet. We decide to make one more stop before entering the old city center.
A few cold drinks, ice creams, and toilet break later, we were a new bunch of pilgrims and not the pathetic bunch we had been just a few minutes before. The route the end of the Camino takes is designed so that you don’t see the Cathedral until you are standing in front of it. We enter the old town and can see the tops of the spires but keep losing sight of them in the narrow streets. By now, we’re caught up in the flow of pilgrims–hundreds of them.
I keep getting pushed ahead. I finally step out of the flow so I can get back to where Pam is. I want to finish this trail together. As we head down the steps beside the Cathedral, Michele shows up and walks the final few meters with us. She and Rob have positioned themselves where they can watch for us coming in. They arrived yesterday.
We entered the plaza and saw everyone at once. Chris and Bob, Michele and Rob, Adrian and Edele, Jim and Katherine all greet us. We have officially completed the Camino Frances.
We are all excited (Pam and I are relieved as well to be done with all the road walking). After we catch up with everyone and make plans for later, we head down to the pilgrim office to get our certification of completion. We have been collecting stamps the entire way from France to prove our route, now it’s time to prove that we’ve done the trail. We head into the office and I blanch–it’s almost a 2 hour line to get your credentials. There’s no way I can stand in the heat for that long.
Pam and I decide to come back later when the line is smaller but George, Shaun, and Richard wait it out. We went and joined Michele and Rob for a beer. I also decide this is a good time to get the keys to the apartment we’ve rented for the next 2 nights. This turned into a mini-panic attack for me. I was overheated and dehydrated. I had to find a way to make contact with the owners to get the keys. Michele loaned us her phone, but they didn’t speak English and my Spanish is terrible at best. I think we agreed to meet in 15 minutes at the place (but where that is, I have no idea).
I learned two important lessons about Apple maps today: 1) if you key in the address while in wifi, Apple maps will remember the directions once you leave wifi and show your position on the map, and 2) Apple maps are not that accurate in Spain. Even though I could show where I was on the map, it wasn’t where I needed to be. With the help of 2 random people, I eventually made it to the apartment.
This must have been the first time they rented the place out through booking.com because there was a lot of new items in the apartment. A new toaster, new shower curtain, new washing machine, and a good amount of groceries for us to use. It was a mother/daughter who met me and they were extremely nice. The apartment was listed as a 2 bedroom which wasn’t quite accurate. It was a 3 bedroom so things would work out great because we have invited Richard to stay with us.
I head back to Pam, Michele, and Rob a bit calmer now that we have a nice place to stay. I had ordered a beer before I left, but only had one sip. If someone didn’t drink it, it was going to be hot. Fortunately, Rob had me covered. I got back to a fresh beer and all was good. While we were sipping on our beers, Muz walked by. We thought he was going to finish a few days ago, but he decided to slow down and enjoy it a bit. He was on his way to the train station to start his tourist phase now that he was done with the Camino.
After about another 45 minutes, the three amigos showed up with their certificates of completion. They must not be too strict–Richard got his. I’m not sure if he listed St Jean as his stating point or Sarria. We like to kid him about being “Bus Man” but he’s the one that came up with the name. He came out with the intention of only walking one week on the Camino but ended up doing much more. Even after going to Italy for a couple of weeks, he came back to actually walk the last 100K with us and become an official pilgrim.
George also overcame a lot on this trip. This is his first real long distance hike. We had just done the Pembrokeshire before starting the Camino. Instead of making George stronger, the Pembrokeshire messed up his feet. With his clown size feet, he has trouble finding size 16 (now he’ll need 17) hiking boots. The Keen boots he had proved to NOT be up to the task of protecting his feet. He pulled off some pretty impressive days along the way (including crossing the Pyrenees in a single day when we had planned for two days). He still walked well over 400K (250 miles). I’m glad we all finished together. I’m also glad that he will be doing some sightseeing now. I felt a lot of guilt and angst for getting him to go on this trip and for all the misery he experienced along the way.
Shaun also deserves a special mention here. Shaun and Megan were the first two people we met on this trip. We actually flew to France on the same plane from London. When we first met Shaun, we didn’t know how well he would handle the trip. He is a little larger than average but he has will and determination like no one I’ve ever met. Fortunately for him, Australia has burned up his internal thermometer. Pam and I would be melting in the heat and hiding in the shade whenever we took a break–Shaun would sit in the full sun and talk about what mild weather we were having. At first we thought he was just showing off trying to get a laugh. Later we realized, he’s just f’d up when it comes to temperature. He wore two shirts every day of the trail–a long sleeve black shirt under a short sleeved white shirt. He never complained once even with his knee hurting him and having a few blisters on his feet. Shaun walked the entire trail–no buses, no taxis, no bikes, no horse–the only time his feet were not on the trail was when he was sleeping (or had them propped up on a chair drinking a beer).
Pam and I also carried everything and walked the entire way. It was important to us that we treat this as a hiking trip to get us prepared for the next hike we will do in a couple of weeks–the GR10 Pyrenees traverse from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea in France (just shy of 600 miles). This is our prep year for starting in on the Triple Crown next year.
Pam and I went around 7 to get our certificates with the plan of meeting George afterwards. George, Pam, and I walked around town a bit while Richard went to the pilgrim’s mass at the Cathederal. In both masses today, they did swing the incense. We are planning on going to the noon mass tomorrow and hope they will swing it again with so many pilgrims finishing today.
Shaun stayed in an old Monastery tonight while Richard joined the 3 of us in our apartment. We went out to dinner with Pete, Linda, and Katherine. We DID NOT have pilgrim meals. Pete and I decided to have one beer, so we had to make it count.
