On the Path Again

Day Three- Portomarin to Ventas de Naron, 12.6kms,  more of a laid back day, took almost 5 hours, steady climb from 388 metres  to 705 metres.

We took a little longer today, stopped more for breaks at little restaurants along the trail and stopped a couple of times to visit other folks that we meet at least once per day. A nice couple from Belgium. 

Beer time!

We are staying at the smallest village we ever stayed at! It has a population of 20, two or three little hotels or hostels and two restaurants/bars. Sounds like two, maybe three families own all of the village including the farms. So we thought, if we get up and hustle, we will be there by noon and then spend the rest of the day looking out the window at the dairy cows! 

I am so glad that I joined the girls on this trip. So far it has been a pleasant and wonderful hike. The girls do get out in front of me at times, but I always manage to catch up.

Come on Dad, you can do it!

The day started climbing up through forest and when it finally flattened out we were back into farmland. Mostly forage land, seems like it is all grass with very little sign of any legumes. They are already laying down the first cut, so probably even ahead of the Fraser Valley.

Nice looking hay.

Walking through a village.

We took one side trip, to an archaeological site of an ancient settlement of five hectares (one of the most important archeological sites in northwestern Spain). The site consists of enclosures that includes pits, walls, moats and parapets. The site was occupied by at least three different groups, the last being the start of the Roman occupation of Galacia, so it is very old.

That’s me, standing in wonderment at the smallness of these different enclosures.

Well that’s it for today. Onward again in the morning, we even get to sleep in an extra thirty minutes.

Day Four- Ventas de Naron to Palas de Rei, 12kms, 4 hours, drop today from 704 metres to 550 metres.

The place we stayed was wonderful, hotel, hostel and restaurant ran by a mother and her two daughters. There were also husband’s around, but I am pretty sure the ladies ran the place.

Our goal is doing one kilometre every 15 minutes, but Keenan felt energized this morning  and had us on a ten minute kilometre for a bit. We manage to meet some of the same people on the trail every day and have a bit of a visit and Keenan does make new friends so we turned our 12kms into a four hour walk to day. 

The day consisted of trees, farms and a few small villages. Nothing was open for the total of the 12kms, but we did manage to see some new sites. 

This area has a lot of eucalyptus plantations.

And of course more farms

and one more

I have seen hydro trucks blocking main access roads while fixing a power outage problem, but this is the first time to see a self loading logging truck taking up most of the road while loading logs roadside. Not sure how the school bus would get past! 

Made it to Palas de Rei, here at 1PM, but can’t check in until 3PM so just kind of wandered around. Finally the hotel manager got in touch and opened the door for us. This all done remotely, no one was at the hotel. Lovely big hotel, lots of rooms, but not another person there, neither staff or other guests. See what happens tomorrow for breakfast.

Day Five- Palas de Rei to Melide 15kms, 5.25 hours, drop today from 550metres to maybe 457metres. 

It started out as a pick’em up and set’em down day. We hit the road at 9:15 and when we got to the main trail there was a group of about 30 students hiking down the other side of the street, very noisy as teenagers are. Well there was no way the girls where going to stay behind them so off we go to get in front, success but then there is another group on the sidewalk in front of us. Down on the street and away we go again, Loreen had us in overdrive. Beat our 15 minute per kilometre by 12 minutes for the first 4kms. 

Country side is still beautiful, lots of farms, churches, villages and animals. I could continue to fill up the blog with more pictures of cute animals and villages etc, but I think I will do a switch and talk a little bit about the Camino de Santiago. We did lots of up a hill and the down a hill only to go right up the next one.

The Camino de Santiago is an ancient pilgrim path also known as The Way of Saint James. There is a network of pilgrim paths from France, Spain and Portugal that pilgrims, hikers and others take to get to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela where St.James is buried. St. James brought his ministry to this part of Spain to preach to the patrons. It seems he was not that successful and when he returned to Jerusalem he was beheaded by Herod. His disciples brought his body back to this area and buried him at Santiago.

There are many different pilgrim paths from different origins to get to Santiago, the one we are on is called the French Way, as it starts in France and is 800kms long. We are doing the last 115kms over 9 days. Lots of people are walking 25 to 30kms per day, but there are lots like us that are taking it slower.

Pilgrims have been coming to Santiago de Compostela for centuries as a spiritual purpose. This pilgrim journey was declared as one of the three great pilgrimages of the Christian world in 1492 by Pope Alexander VI. 

It was declared a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe in 1987 and parts of the different path made UNESCO Heritage sites in 1993, 1998 and 2015. 

Today there are around 200,000 pilgrims/hikers that make the journey to Santiago de Compostela by the different paths annually. The paths, at least the one we are on are well marked with concrete markers that have a replica of a shell, an arrow pointing the way and the mileage left to get to Santiago on it.

One can register to receive an official Compostela certificate at the end of your pilgrimage/journey. You are expected to have a spiritual or self filling purpose to embark on one of the paths. This pilgrim journey has been on Loreen’s bucket list for a long time and Keenan joined to support her. I came along because I didn’t want to be home alone! 

You have to walk at least 100kms or bike 200kms. You are issued a Pilgrims Passport at your starting point and you must obtain a minimum of two passport stamps per day of your walk. Stamps are available at churches, places you stay overnight, most restaurants and coffee shops along the route. Churches like a donation but there is not always a donation box nor an attendant. So far I think we are averaging 3 stamps per day.

Well that’s enough on the Way of St James. 

Walking the Camino

We arrived in Spain after an overnight flight to Madrid through London. We over nighted in Madrid and caught the fast train to Sarria. We went through a lot of farm land, both agriculture and tree farms. You see the country side really fast, as the train got up to 294km/hr for a lot of the trip. Trying to determine whether the tree farms were olives or eucalyptus was tricky, trees looked like driving past someone’s picket fence.

For some reason, I am always a little surprised by the large fields we see in Europe. You kind of just think of large farms in North America and countries like the Ukraine, but there are some pretty large looking farms elsewhere too. I guess, I am still a farm boy at heart, because I love looking at the farm land and the country side when I travel, cities are nice, and the architecture can be amazing, but for me the country side and the little villages are the best.

We went through one mountain range, and although the grass was green and the trees were all budding out, there was still snow up high. We passed a lot of solar farms and a couple of wind farms, with many more off in the distance. 

We started the 115km walk on the Camino Frances from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela (in the northwest region of Spain called “emerald green” Galicia) on Tuesday morning.

Day One on the Camino- Sarria to Morgade. 12.5kms, 3 hours, 654m of ascent.

Just like walking to school, uphill both ways in the snow! Oh right, we only went one way and it was 20 degrees Celsius. 

Starting out, leaving Sarria.

It was a pleasant day, nice weather, and we met some nice people to visit with. Although we passed through a couple of small villages, there was only one place where we could have stopped for bevvies and a bite, but it was full already. This early in the season, there are a variety of pilgrims, including solo walkers, couples, a family with a baby, and the obligatory groups of high school field trippers, and a Chinese tour group. I think it is probably half sightseers like us, and half dedicated pilgrims, which is maybe why we only found one wine and beer shop until we got to the little village we were to stop for the day. Alas, it was still closed for the season, so we had to turn around and trek back up the trail for half a kilometre to get a vino! 

We walked through a lot of farm land, seeing dairy and beef cattle, hogs and chicken, and a couple of sheep. Mostly walking on dirt or gravel pathways, but sometimes along the side of the paved road. 

My kind of scenery!

This is a refurbished storage bin. 

These were used long ago to store foods such as grain, corn and potatoes. The air helped dry and preserve while the height helped keep it safe from animals.

The villages were all small, some only a couple of homes, and others anywhere from a population of 116 to 187.

Going through an old village.

Day two- Morgade to Portomarin. 10.2kms, 3 hours, from the highest point of 660 metres descended down to 388 metres.

Today was much the same as yesterday, strolling through more farm land and small villages. Most of the villages are actually just a few stone buildings around a dairy or beef farm on the edge of the trail. The cows are much better trained than any I have ever worked around, in some places the fence is simply some plastic string along the field edge, or no fence, just a long step down!

No fence here.

The scenery is beautiful and walking is very peaceful, with little shops and cafes along the way where you can always take a break.

Paris, Paris

Paris, big, bustling, busy and, oh, so cold when we were there. Arrived into Paris mid afternoon and were bused from the train station into the center of the city to our hotel which was situated across the street from the Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera House. The Intercontinental Le Grand Hotel is quite a grand old hotel. Opened in 1862 and with bragging rights of having held government heads of state, royalty and many of the rich and famous over the years, the rack rates certainly try and impress as such. The staff and the great huge lobby and concierge area was really impressive, while the room while nice was a little outdated and with a rate of some $900 euros per night could have been a lot cleaner. (Avalon River Cruises books around 150 guests or more here every week so the rate for us was done in the 100 euros per night range.) Loreen, ever diligent, upon inspection, requested that the dust bunnies accumulated under the bed spread and window drapes be rectified. This resulted in a thorough cleaning the next day as well as a bottle of Champagne, a box of artisan cookies and a dozen macaroons being sent to the room. Oh how I love that girl!!

Our first adventure was a walking tour that took us through some of the old city and ended up at Notre Dame Cathedral. Having been in a basilica or cathedral almost every day for the past three weeks I was prepared to kind of wonder off on my own for awhile, but I was more than pleasantly surprised by this Cathedral. The Cathedral is a very large and imposing structure,

Side of Notre Dame

Front Entrance

The inside is beautiful as Cathedrals can be with all the stained glass and ceiling painting.

The only Church type building I have been in where security officers hold back the crowd while the clergy is leaving, I think they performed three separate services while we were wandering around.

During the Service

As the walking tour was mostly going to retrace the same route back to the hotel we opted out and jumped on a hop-on, hop-off bus for the afternoon.

On the Hop-on, Hop-off

 We stayed on the bus most of the afternoon and passed some of the highlights of Paris.

Moulin Rouge

Arc de Triomphe

It was a cold blustery day so we did not do much walking around, just rode the bus and listened to the descriptions of the areas we were in and took in the sights.

The next morning we walked back down to the Louvre and decided that it is so big, that we would only do it and ourselves a disservice by spending only a couple of hours there. I think the Louvre would take two or three days  to actually be able to enjoy it properly.

In front of the Louvre

Then we took a hop-on, hop-off boat cruise on the Seine River.  The Seine runs through the center of Paris and gives one a totally different perspective of the city from the water as from the streets, plus it was warm in the boat.

One of about seven or eight bridges we went under.

Eiffel Tower, what a piece of engineering.

Back to the hotel and then off to look at some shopping areas. We went to the department stores Galeries Lafayette and Printemps where it is made up of three blocks of stores around the Opera House. All are six or seven floors and the amount of product is unbelievable. One total floor was for handbags and the Gucci handbag area was a closed section with security guards letting clients in. The line up was probably fifteen deep and they were letting no more than three customers at a time inside.

We were able to find some French chocolate and French olive oil in the basement area of the last one we went to. This floor had a medium sized grocery/liquor store plus a lot of eating establishments and then a huge French wine store with the 30 year old wines and 100 euro prices. We looked a lot and then went for our last meal in Paris. French Onion Soup and Croque Madame's, (fried ham and cheese sandwich with a nice fried egg on top).

French Onion Soup Paris Style!!