Leon

Frog, mule and now lion, a veritable zoo. Of course the origins of the names may have little or nothing to do with their current links to familiar animals. While the lion is a symbol of modern Leon (sorry for the absence of accents; have not figured out how to do them on the iPhone), and lions in one form or another are almost ubiquitous in the art works representing the city, the origin of the name is from the Roman term for legion and not linked to large cats.

With glorious weather, a relaxed Sunday afternoon has been spent seeing a few of the highlights of Leon. Great luck allowed a visit to the cathedral without the expected Sunday crowd. Even greater luck brought me ino the Museo de Leon's annex at San Marcos, the church next to the Parador. Its three rooms, the sanctuary, the coro, and the chapter room, are awe inspiring examples of the gothic. Leon is a treasure house for fans of romanesque and gothic architecture, and San Marcos is one of its greatest jewels. I am only sorry that i did not discover it on earlier visits to the city.

Tomorrow back to serious walking and on toward Hospital de Orbigo.

Mansilla de las Mulas

Frogs followed by mules, the great fun of toponomy!

A badly needed light walking day, actually the second in a row. The trek into Leon tomorrow is not a distance challenge either, though it is a challenge to deal with urban places after a week of hamlets, villages and small towns. I almost wish there were a way to avoid cities on the Camino, but each one of the big cities does have charm and importance to the route.

Great steps toward increasing the safety of peregrinos have certainly been made since 2001. While too many crossings of busy roads remain, the walker rarely has to contend with more than a few meters of roadside walking. On todays walk, an overpass brings the peregrino into Mansilla across the busy highway, and a it earlier in the day's walk it was no longer necessary to cross the busy RENFE line at grade. The danger to the pedestrian peregrino is now more from speed crazed bicyclists intent on reaching Santiago day after tomorrow but insisting on riding on the senda rather than the parallell road.

El Burgo Ranero

I have long wanted to use that name in a posting, and this is a chance!

Almost to the end of the meseta, tomorrow it ends at Mansilla de las
Mulas. The crowding has abated a little. Not at all sure where the crowd coming out of Carrion de los Condes has disappeared to.

At a lovely small albergue in El Burgo Ranero, the first not full, I enjoyed the afternoon sunshine, wrote and read a little, and chatted with pilgrims from at least 5 countries, not including the US. In fact, aside from a woman from Miami and her American mother who lives in Brasil, I have encountered almost no Americans. Lots of Irish and Canadians along with a few Australians comprise the English speaking brigade in the great fog of languages on the Camino at this season, a subject to be addressed when not writing on an iPhone.

Calzadilla de. la Cueza

Almost half the way and not a single posting! Blame excessively hot weather the first week, my age and the strain of walking, an iphone as a computer terminal, and lots of people.

The number walking is truly phenomenal. In 1998 and again in 2001 I was accustomed to walking for hours and seeing one or two other peregrinos. This morning, while it was still dark, the parade of peregrinos out of Carrion de los Condes reminded me of the rush to METRO stations a little later in the morning in the DC suburbs. Doing the Camino this time is proving to be a vastly different experience in many ways from past walks. Solitude is not available on the Camino Frances this autumn! When I return,I shall comment at length on the changes. For the moment,composing on an iphone is taking all of the fun out of blogging!

Pamplona

Tomorrow I start walking, today is a rest day to cure jet lag. In the decade since I was last here, Pamplona has become much more prosperous, and it appears as if the Camino has become much more popular. Before the heat of the day, I walked down to the bridge across the Arga and then up the ramparts to take some photos, and the number of pilgrims entering the city in the morning, on foot and on bicycles, was quite amazing, this nearly a month for walkers and at least 2 weeks for bicyclists, prior to Santiago. Of course European summer holidays are still on, and I talked with several only doing a couple of weeks, perhaps going as far as Burgos, before quitting for the year. Hope so, as I do not relish the prospects of a crowded Camino. Walking a decade ago was luxurious, I guess.

Ready to Leave - Labor Day 5 September 2011: Maps

Scallop Shell Decoration on Building, 8th Arr., Paris

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Given the jobless rate, the stagnation of worker incomes, and the demise of unions as a countervailing power to oligopoly capitalism and the plutocratic accumulation of wealth in the US, Labor Day is a rather bitter joke, but this holiday does mark the end of summer. For me it is also the last day before leaving for Spain and the Camino. I fly to Madrid tomorrow evening then go on by bus to Pamplona where I begin to walk on Friday after spending Thursday to recover from jet lag and to once again sightsee in the capital of Navarra. For a change, I am completely packed with everything in order. Usually I fail to finish until a few minutes before leaving for the airport. As always, there will be the thought "what did I forget." Last time it was my jacket, so that was one of the first items into the pack yesterday. 

Spent a little time reviewing maps over the past few weeks, and I had planned to do an entire posting on maps before leaving, but that shall have to wait until I return. For use while walking, I evaluated two map sets currently available, and one of them is far superior to the other. On one or another Camino email list a map set published by Camino Downunder, Camino Santiago: 30 All Weather Walking Maps (ISBN 978-0-646-52975-2) was recommended, though I really do not know why. The set is a handy size and published on water resistant paper, but the maps per se are poor in the extreme. The route is shown in yellow on a shaded relief map but few details are shown. None of the landmarks which might confirm the location of the route are indicated on the maps, and no street maps for the larger towns and cities are included. While the back side of the map pages list accommodations, those are not pinpointed on the maps themselves. At a list price of Australian $39.50 (I paid almost $50 US when tax and shipping were included), the set is not worthwhile. The map pages in the Brierly guide (see the discussion of guide books several postings back) are far superior.

A much better and cheaper map set is the Camino de Santiago Map published by Vancouver's Pili Pala Press (ISBN 978-0-9731698-5-0). Also on somewhat water resistant paper, the maps provide sufficient detail as to be useful for wayfinding and for locating accommocations. Decent street maps are included for the larger towns, and points of interest along the way are indicated. I plan to carry this with me, and at $18 (Cdn $16) it is available from Wide World Books and Maps in Seattle. It is a map collection I recommend.

Where does the Camino Begin? The St. Jean-Pied-de-Port fetish

Route Napoléon, 1998

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Why and how did the peculiar idea that the Camino to Santiago de Compostela somehow starts at the  French tourist-trap St. Jean Pied-de-Port get its start? Most of the guidebooks in English describe the route of the Camino Francés from that point onward (though at least one of them, the CSJ guide, discourages starting there), and all too many reminiscences of walking the route describe the horrors of the Pyrenees crossing  following the Route Napoléon as the first day on the Camino. Several pilgrims of my acquaintance have either terminated their walk at Roncesvalles or seriously considered doing so because of the rigors of beginning in St. Jean, even when walking the Valcarlos route, lower in elevation and somewhat safer in bad weather, into Spain.

While St. Jean Pied-de-Port has its charms, the Route Napoléon over the Pyrenees is the worst of all possible trails for a pilgrim, especially one from outside Europe (or from more distant corners of that continent) to begin the walk to Santiago. Arriving late in the afternoon after a long flight or set of flights and then a long train, taxi, or bus trip, the pilgrim begins the next morning a 25 km alpine hike including a nearly 1300 meter climb followed by a nearly 400 meter descent into Roncesvalles. Especially enjoyable and easy if one comes directly from North America, out of shape from several days of travel and with a 6-9 hour jet lag to recover from! In fact, that combination of distance and elevation change is likely to tax a hiker who is in first-class condition. If penitence is the goal, why not get off the plane in London, walk to Dover, swim the channel, and then walk on to St. Jean? At the foot of the Route Napoléon, the North American pilgrim would then be in reasonable condition to face the Pyrenees crossing.

In the Middle Ages, only the relatively few pilgrims from the local parish would have started in St. Jean. Almost all others following the route would have had days of walking behind them with the consequent conditioning. And those pilgrims were more accustomed to walking and heavy exercise in their daily lives than most modern people are. Following the path of least resistance, early walkers would have likely selected the lower and somewhat less challenging Valcarlos route. Once in Spain, only one section of the Camino Francés offers a similar challenge, the climb to O Cebreiro, and that comes well into the route, after the pilgrim is accustomed to walking carrying a pack (and it is easy to arrange for transport of the backpack to O Cebreiro from Villafranca del Bierzo) and climbing.

And for all the rigors of alpine hiking it demands of the pilgrim, the vistas afforded by the Route Napoléon are pretty but hardly awesome. The true grandeur of the Pyrenees is not apparent until one gets quite a distance further east. The far western Pyrenees have a landscape not too different from the mountains of West Virginia, while the eastern portions compare favorably to the more rugged parts of the Rockies or the North Cascades. If one wishes to include some true Alpine walking as part of their Camino, it would be better to start in Pau, Oloron, or at the top of the Somport Pass, all readily accessible by public transport. Uphill to Somport is challenging but gentler and far more gradual than the uphill out of St. Jean. Downhill from the top of Somport to Jaca is a beautiful walk, and it is followed by several days along the bucolic and lovely Camino Aragonés, with a view of the high Pyrenees in the distance, before joining the Camino Francés at Puente la Reina.

The St. Jean fetish has bothered me since I first walked the Camino in 1998 and discovered what a terrible place it is to begin. My second walk started at Oloron via Somport to Jaca, and it was a far more satisfactory beginning. The Somport route is quite as historic and culturally important as that through Roncesvalles. Some pilgrims from far western Europe, the ones who did not make part of their trip by sea or follow the coastal route,  passed through St. Jean. A huge number of pilgrims from Italy, the Rhone Valley and parts of Europe north and east of there, including Poland, Switzerland, Scandinavia and much of Germany, crossed the mountains at Somport.

Why then do so many walkers work so very hard to arrange transport to St. Jean in order to face the unnecessary rigors of the Route Napoléon? It was but one of the routes into Spain in the great age of pilgrimages, but it has few special distinctions other than offering a somewhat lower pass than is available to the east. The convergence of the St. Jean and Somport routes at Puente la Reina really marks the commencement of the Camino Francés suggesting that the Camino begins there. Most Spaniards consider they have done the entire Camino when they start at Roncesvalles. Starting at St, Jean, in short, makes no sense!

From a practical point of view, using public transport it is easier to get to Pamplona than Puente la Reina, and as a matter of time and personal conditioning, I plan to begin this autumn's walk at Pamplona. If I had the extra time and felt I was in condition to do climbing early in the Camino, I would begin in France at Oloron St. Marie. If it were absolutely essential to pass through St. Jean, I would arrange to do a week of walking on the Chemin in France prior to the ascent on the Route Napoléon.

Camino Aragonés near Ruesta

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