Reflections On El Camino , livre ebook

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd - Norman Handy

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110 pages

English

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'El Camino' is the pilgrim's route across northern Spain to reach the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. This was built on the site where the body of the disciple St James was buried after he was martyred in Jerusalem in 44AD. His remains lay unmarked and unknown for eight centuries until a miraculous light led a shepherd to discover the bones in a cave. A cathedral was built over the spot where the bones were found and it became one of the prime destinations for pilgrims in the medieval era. But the way to Santiago de Compostela was fraught with danger for those pilgrims, with the notoriously bad weather in the Pyrenees, warring kingdoms in the north, civil war and the ever-present danger of invasion from the Muslim Moors who controlled the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula.This book is a long-distance trek through the countryside, culture and history of the area: from St Jean Pied de Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela, then onwards to the Atlantic coast of Spain, and finally to Finisterre - or 'the end of the world', as it was known in the times of the Roman Empire. It is a journey of over 900 kilometres. But what is the route like today for the modern pilgrim?

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Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Date de parution	30 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781398424845
Langue	English

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R eflections O n E l C amino
Norman Handy
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Reflections On El Camino About the Author Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1: Crossing the Pyrénées Chapter 2: Getting Started Going West Chapter 3: Pamplona without the Bulls Chapter 4: Alto De Pardon, Energy or Environment? Chapter 5: Reflections Before Los Arcos Chapter 6: La Rioja, Land of Red Wine Chapter 7: Cockerels in the Cathedral Chapter 8: El Cid in Burgos Chapter 9: Upset Under the Umbrellas Chapter 10: Mr Blue in Mansilla De Las Mulas Chapter 11: Leaving León Chapter 12: Xavier’s Contact with Concrete Chapter 13: Police Ambush in Sarria Chapter 14: Pulpo in Melide Chapter 15: Santiago de Compostela Chapter 16: Mrs Red Cape Chapter 17: Finally Finisterre The Klondikers K2, The Savage Mountain Overlanding the Silk Road Yellow School Bus Crossing Russia on the Trans Siberian Across the Caspian Condors over Chile Gold, Ivory and Slaves Carnival Cape to Cairo White to Black Danger in the Jungle -->
About the Author
Norman Handy was born in Beckenham in the south-east of England. He went to Clare House School and secondary school at a mixed boarding school in Cranbrook, Kent. Later, he studied law for accountants, business economics and accountancy at Southampton University.
Even during his studies, he travelled as often as he could, such as cycling down La Loire Valley and behind the Iron Curtain. After leaving university, he lived and worked abroad, ending up on a date plantation.
He returned to the United Kingdom and after working in a riding school, followed a career in the financial services sector based in London but including periods working abroad in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He published his first book in 2017.
He has two children and is a keen walker, skier, cyclist, horse rider and, of course, writer! He spends his time between his homes in West Sussex and travelling.
Copyright Information ©
Norman Handy 2022
The right of Norman Handy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398424838 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398424845 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
For all the pilgrims for their comradery and who encouraged me and others to continue when we were feeling low.
Other books by the same author:
The Klondikers
K2, The Savage Mountain
Overlanding the Silk Road
Crossing Russia on the Trans-Siberian
Yellow School Bus
Across the Caspian
Condors over Chile
Gold, Ivory and Slaves
Carnival
Chapter 1 Crossing the Pyrénées
I was huddled behind a large rock, sheltering from the wind and driving rain. I was shivering from the cold and water was dripping off my nose. My feet ached and my hands felt like blocks of ice. My lungs ached from the exertion of the struggle to get up the path and the thin air. I was high up in the Pyrénées above the tree line and just a short distance from the French border with Spain.
What on earth was I thinking? Why was I here? Had I bitten off more than I could chew? A few weeks earlier I had been researching El Camino, the pilgrim route across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, which was the final resting place of the remains of St James, the patron saint of Spain.
Walking El Camino had been on my bucket list for a long time and now I was on it. People start in different places with some of the longer routes starting in England and Germany, but my chosen starting point was St Pied de Port, an ancient town on the eastern slopes of the foothills of the Pyrénées in France. It had a great advantage for me as it was easy to get to. I could fly into nearby Biarritz and take the train to the end of the line in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
I had been to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port a few years earlier. I was a secret shopper for a travel company that sold surfing holidays at a particular resort on the coast opposite the Bay of Biscay. They wanted a report on their representative, the management of the resort and the quality of the training school instructors giving lessons on how to learn to surf. The ‘holiday’ was free, and I would get a modest fee, but I had to get myself to the resort.
I accepted the assignment before checking my travel arrangements. There was no public transport to the resort so I had to hire a car from the nearest airport at Biarritz to the resort. I was due to fly Ryanair from Stansted, but there was another unexpected cost, which was getting to the airport. The overhead power cables along the railway from London to Stansted were down so I had to hire a taxi so my ‘free holiday’ ended up costing me more than my fee. But since I had the hire car, and I had some time before I was expected in resort, I drove into the mountains of the Pyrénées to see Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
Whilst walking around the town I saw many pilgrims, eager and fresh and ready to start their pilgrimage. Just a year later I was in Santiago de Compostela standing in the plaza in front of the cathedral surrounded by pilgrims. They were tired, dirty, exhausted but elated as having completed their pilgrimage. I felt that I was the only person without a scallop shell, in Spanish ‘ concha ’, the sign of a pilgrim, and without blisters on my feet, and I felt a bit of a fraud. I had been to the start and the finish of El Camino, but now, I was doing the bit in between by myself.
The pilgrim route’s official name is El Camino de Santiago and also known in English as the Way of Saint James. It is a network of routes for pilgrims to cross Europe and reach the shrine of Saint James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain.
A few months before setting off on my Camino, I had been dining with friends at home when I asked whether anyone wanted to go for a long walk. They all answered positively thinking the suggestion was something like going for a Sunday afternoon stroll along the South Downs, not far from home. They all laughed when I elaborated and said that it was 800 kilometres, over 5 weeks across northern Spain and they all promptly backed out. They would be laughing at me now if they could see me or knew how I felt and congratulating themselves on taking the right decision and not walking into the mountains in a storm. So I was doing it by myself, but I wasn’t totally alone as there were other pilgrims walking El Camino.
I had flown into Biarritz and spend some time looking around the luxury seaside resort. Since this is part of the French Basque region, its Basque name is Miarritze although the town has had more than a dozen names with different spellings over the centuries. People have lived in the town since the Middle Palaeolithic, but the town first gets a mention in official documents in Bayonne’s Golden book in 1186 at which time it was already an English possession. In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine who already owned Biarritz married Henry II of England and brought it with her as part of her dowry, being part of the Duchy of Aquitaine.
The town made its living from the sea, catching fish and whaling. A tower was built on the promontory, part of the Old Town that sticks out into the sea. Wet straw would be burnt to produce a plume of smoke when a whale was sighted. The whaling industry collapsed when the whales left the area, but tourism was becoming popular along with bathing in the sea.
France was at war by the start of the nineteenth century with most of the rest of Europe and the well-off couldn’t travel abroad so French resorts became popular. Napoleon ordered casinos to be built in many cities and resorts to provide entertainment for his officers and the upper classes or what was left of them after the French Revolution and the extensive use of the guillotine.
Napoleon is recorded as having bathed here in 1808. In 1854, Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, built a palace on the beach, which dominates the coast just north of the Old Town. It is now the Hôtel du Palais, a luxury hotel with two nearby casinos.
European royalty, including Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and the Spanish king Alfonso XIII, were frequent visitors. It is definitely a very luxurious hotel and very expensive. You can stay for a week in another local five-star hotel for the price of a single night here.
After my whistle-stop tour of the centre, I took a taxi to the railway station to catch the train. It was a scenic journey up a valley into the foothills of the Pyrénées to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and I walked from the station through the town to my hostel.
I reasoned that most people would arrive at the weekend having finished work on a Friday and would start walking straight away. I didn’t want to be part of a large crowd as I wanted a contemplative and reflective walk with time to think rather than a walk and talk experience in a large noisy group. I was trying to think about what others might do and have a contrary plan. Therefore, I was going to start my Camino midweek so although I had arrived on a Saturday, I had some time to do some practice walking and to acclimatise before starting my own Camino midweek.
I booked into a hostel in the town and all of the other guests were pilgrims star