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Dear God, thank you for letting me happen upon this small church, so I might rest my anguished feet. This little church, alongside the Camino, somewhere in the far flung regions of rural Spain. A place where I can kneel and pray in solitude.
Leòn Cathedral is among the greatest of human works in Gothic style. The church features one of the world’s largest collections of medieval stained glass windows.
In today’s dispatch, Sean answers reader questions about his trek across Spain.
It was our first day off. We had been walking the Camino for three weeks, upwards of 18 miles per day, until our feet bear a striking resemblance to USDA-approved ground ch
A bar, somewhere in rural Spain. A rooster is crowing near the open door. Distant goats are bleating. Spanish farmers gather to chew the morning fat.
We are walking the Camino de Santiago when the power goes out in Spain. At first, we do not know the power is out, of course. The only thing we notice is that our phones have quit working.
We arrive in the city of Burgos after a 14-mile walk. Although it feels like 14 million miles. Today is hot. We are sunburned, thirsty, and our skin is covered in a fine layer of crystalized salt from evaporated sweat.
You do three things on the Camino each day. You walk. You talk. You stop to pee.
We all stand outside the small market in Villamayor. There are about twenty-five, maybe thirty of us hapless, fatigued pilgrims. Sweaty and covered in grit. All wearing the same clothes we were wearing two weeks ago.
Grañón is a small village dating back to 885. The stone streets are empty this afternoon. Siesta is underway, the Spanish world has shut down to observe their daily food coma. There are seemingly no rooms in all of Spain tonight. There are 40 percent more pilgrims walking the Camino, we are told, than there …
The woman at the hostel utters four magic words. “Si, we have beds.” This is amazing. There have been no beds in Spain for Holy Week. It’s almost Easter Sunday and we have been beggars, compelled to walk the Camino de Santiago with our hats in hand, and our hands out, looking for beds.
I am sitting in a Spanish bar in the dusty pueblo of Villa de Larraga. This is evidently a locals bar. And I am definitely not a local. I believe I am the only Inglés speaker in this village tonight.
The stone doorway arch above us features carvings of angels and demons which date back to Roman times. Eight angels surround Christ, who is looking straight at me as though He is saying, “‘No room’ at the inn?—Now where have I heard THAT before?”
The 83-year-old woman has been opening her home to pilgrims since before I was born. Currently, she is bustling around her house, gathering fresh towels and soaps for us. We are standing in her doorway, drenched, cold, and looking about as content as wet Himalayan cats.
We leave our inn at daybreak. Our innkeeper is awake and already at the front door, wearing a robe, waiting to say goodbye to us. Like a mom seeing her kids off to school. She gives us a heartfelt and emotional goodbye in French, with double kisses and everything.
There are hundreds of pilgrims. Very few speak English. We are all from different countries, age groups, and walks of life. And yet, somehow, although we are foreigners sojourning in a strange land, we all manage to—this is beautiful—gripe about how slow the line moves.
The inn where we are staying is manned (womanned?) by two French women who speak no English and almost no Spanish.
Amazingly, spirituality is not a “weird” and awkward subject for the people of Madrid, it’s normalized. Here, people seem to treat the topic of religion as cordially as you’d discuss college football.
Today, my wife and I will become pilgrims. We will walk the breadth of Spain, upwards of 500 miles, over Pyrenees Mountains, on foot, to visit the remains of the apostle James.