Author: Thom

We’re still about 12km from the Cathedral, with some villages and suburban sprawl to go before we even hit the city proper, but to me this marker is the first real sign that the end is nigh, so to speak. In subsequent years, I believe that they’ve moved this marker a little closer to the city, possibly more than once. […]

The last morning’s walk is in and out of tiny villages while walking through forest and farm with lots and lots of new pilgrim friends. The big bump in numbers happens at Sarria, of course, but by this final day several other Camino routes have merged in. Everybody’s torn between the thoughts of finally arriving and not wanting this journey […]

Like it or not, the Camino is full of graffiti that runs the gamut from profound to silly. This message was on the side of a farmhouse. I can’t imagine the owner appreciated it, but I found it quite moving. Date: 02 May 2013 Place: between O Pedrouzo and San Paio (Province of A Coruña, Galicia, Spain) Today started: O […]

We began the final day of our 2013 Camino early enough. We had planned that this last day walking would be shorter than average – about 21km – since we wanted to make it into Santiago de Compostela as early as possible. This photo gives you a good idea of what the town of O Pedrouzo looks like. It’s fairly […]

After failing to turn left, we walked a ways into the forest before turning back and taking the correct turn to O Pedrouzo and our albergue. Here we see a happy Francine with a dessert of Tarta de Santiago. She’s exhausted but content, as am I. The next day, we would walk into Santiago de Compostela for the first time. […]

There is a rather infamous intersection that always trips me up. You’re walking a forest path, and it crosses a fairly major road. You see this sign with all its (mostly) left-pointing arrows. Just across the road is a yellow arrow pointing forward to continue along the forest road, rather than left. What do you do? Well, it depends. Are […]

In contrast to the late Guillermo Watt, who died on Camino just a day short of Santiago, the late Myra Brennan passed away in Santiago, having just completed her second pilgrimage. Her first is registered by the Confraternity of Saint James as having been completed in June of 2002, and she never got the chance to register her second in […]

This is most of the tiny village of Santa Irene. I think the building on the left is a lovely albergue that claims to be one of the oldest continuously operating private albergues on the Camino. We stayed here in 2016 and 2018, but for our 2013 Camino when this photo was taken, it was barely a passing thought. Date: […]

Just across a busy intersection from O Ceadoiro, a pretty decent restaurant in Arca, we find… this. Whatever it is, this was the mascot of the Jacobean Holy Year of 1993, and his name is Pelegrín, which just means “pilgrim” in the Galician language. While this is by far the largest version of him I’ve seen, at one time his […]