Information in [brackets] is supplied by Maryjane Dunn; information in {brackets} is from Michael's log.
The Camino de Santiago is still in use, though not nearly so popular now. In late August, 1991, we set out on the principal French route, which begins in Paris at the Tower of St. James, two blocks from Notre Dame cathedral. We rode 650 fairly level miles through Tours, Poitiers, Bordeaux, and then over the Pyrennees into Spain.
John took his mountain bike; Michael chose his drop-handle touring bike with sturdy wheels and tires. Both bikes performed well. {We're traveling light. Besides bike shorts and jerseys, we have Gore-Tex jack and pants. For evening wear, a pair of dark slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and walking-around-town shoes. John has brought running shoes; I have lightweight leather Rockports. I need many pounds of guide books, John has a long sleeved shirt. We are always comfortable. . . .To secure our bikes, I have chosen the multistrand cable with a padlock. They are said to be much more cut-proof than regular cables, and even more resistant than U-type locks. To be sure we don't lock ourselves out of our own bikes, John made a copy of my key. Unfortunately, he left it at home. . . I have developed systems for staying light weight. One is to use mailers to send film back to the U.S. Another is to bring or buy manila folders to send back maps, guide books, etc. when I am through with them. I send one such package off at the main post office in Orleans and buy stamps for postcards. The package costs 21.90 FF/$3.84.
The green Michelin guide books contain valuable information on history and sights, as well as town maps coordinated with the excellent Michelin road maps. These are usually all you need to find your way. Bookstores also carry the "Green Series" maps with twice the detail. {I keep the current map in the plastic pocket on top of my handle bar bag so I can read it as we roll along. The detail of the Green Series map helps us find and follow the path through the field, but I have to remove and refold it twice as often as I do the Michelins. The double dirt track through a field is probably not on the Authentic Route, but it feels the most pilgrim-like of anything since we left Paris.}
Much of the old pilgrim route is now national highway, but there are still stretches of quiet country lane, double track through farmers' fields, Roman road, or trails. Blackberry vines onced reached out across our path for a couple of miles grabbing a shirt from a pannier and causing our only flat. We retaliated by eating the berries.
. . . On the last day of our trip [in 1991], we climbed the mountains themselves. A scenic and sharp ascent: 2750 feet in 17 miles. {Very steep going up Ibañeta Pass. We are using lowest gear much of the time. Going 6 to 7 k/hour (3.7-4.4 mph). At about 710 m/2329 ft. we meet a couple from Holland resting beside their touring cycles; they wear no helmets. A busload of white haired ladies passes us and gawks. A sign shows the pilgrim foot road disappearing off to the left in the underbrush. Looks cyclable. . . I guess I had imagined this would be like Independence Pass with great vistas above timberline, but on switchbacks at 880 m I am still in a forest. We get to the top by 1:00 at an average speed of 10.6k/6.6 mph. It is 27.3k/17 mi. by my cyclometer.} Near the summit we stood at the monument to Roland, Charlemagne's fallen lieutenant, and visited our last monastery, then coasted into Pamplona at the end of the twelfth day.
We saw few other pilgrims or cycle tourists, but motorists were usually polite, signaling before passing. Most people were hospitable. One man we asked for directions gave us an escort through town when he found out our nationality; he had fought alongside Americans during the Second World War. Farther on in a small village we found a lone table in the shade with a canister and sign: "Emergency water for hikers and cyclists." Friendly staff in two bike stores made minor but essential repairs for free. Descending the Pyrenees, we helped a cyclist fix his derailleur, and in return he led us down the mountain and through Pamplona to the train station where we checked in our bikes. {John had outclimbed me on Ibañeta Pass and now really spins up Erro pass. On top we meet Juan in racing clothes and with a fast-looking bike. I say hello to him in Spanish and he replies in Basque. He turns friendly, though, and tells us about a fountain by a church in a village below. The only water between here and Pamplona--valuable information. . . . John wears a visor under his helmet, and that might not be too bad for next year, especially since I'll be riding west from Pamplona to Compostela. Headwind into Pamplona, but slightly downhill. We should be in plenty of time to make the night train. We keep catching up with Juan. First we catch him at the fountain and then when he breaks a gear cable. Apparently as a way of thanking John for helping him fix the derailleur, he gives us an escort all the way into and through Pamplona, thereby saving us load of time and hassles.}
. . . [1992 trip]: Those who follow the course of the authentic pilgrimage route can still enjoy the network of hostels founded in medieval times. It has all but disappeared in the rest of Europe, but thrives in Spain. stops are usually a day's walk apart--except in two cases, and even then pilgrims can find inexpensive lodging. For a night in the dormitory-like hostels, the voyager is asked to leave whatever s/he can afford. Michael and I gave from one to ten dollars. We spent more for the rich northern Spanish café con leche than we did for rooms.
Pilgrims carry a card which is stamped and dated at each stop to establish that travel was self-powered: by foot or bicycle--or in rare cases--horseback. [These "pilgrim passports" are now available from the Friends of the Road; see below for more information.] Presentation of the completed card at the Cathedral of Santiago in Compostela entitles one to a signed certificate in Latin, [the Compostela] as awarded in the Middle Ages.
. . .Alas, all good things must end. In Compostela we packed our bicycles on the night train and dozed to Madrid in the sleeper car. Echoes of the past accompanied us. We had finished the Voyage we had undertaken a thousand miles ago in Paris and carried out a thousand years ago in our imagination. Like all bike trips, it was filled with adventures and moved across the earth, but unlike many, it was designed to also take the traveler on a parallel path. "Travel is a spiritual, as well as a temporal experience. The man who depart is never the man who returns," says Mel Ziegler of Banana Republic.
. . . Settling back in our seats as the plane climbed to altitude, we talked about how physically difficult this trip had been-- and wondered whether we would ever go on bike tour again. But we both knew we would. Through bicycle touring is not the easiest way to see a country, it leads through various spaces, and for many of us that's the best way to travel. So now we have complete the Way. Returning pilgrims were charged with spreading the message to those they met back home--and they were often known to set out once again on other roads.
Stanton, Edward F.
Road of Stars to Santiago
Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1994
198 pp; illus; map; bibliography
Hitt, Jack
Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain
NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994
265 pp
In Europe during the 1993 Holy Year we expected it and we got it: a deluge of publications, scholarly, topographical, and personal, about the pilgrimage to Compostela. Pilgrims to Compostela are not just European: they come from all parts of the globe, as the two recent guides in Japanese attest. The United States has its aficionados, as this newsletter demonstrates. And as do their European counterparts, they have things to communicate about their experiences.
So it comes as no surprise, rather pleasure, to find two narratives of pilgrimage experience that have been published in the United States in 1994.
Both Stanton and Hitt walked the Road in the summer of 1992. Did they know of each other? Apparently not. They both walked the Roncesvalles route: did they pass each other along the way? It does not seem so. Yet they and their works share common aspects (they both are male, white, mid-40s, Protestants--all merely coincidences).
Each author introduces the pilgrimage and offers an historical introduction to the pilgrimage and the cult of Saint James. Stanton prefers a quick gloss, just enough of a background to allow the novice to understand the subject at hand. Hitt delves more insistently into the nature of pilgrimage and the questions that plague / nip at the heels of the Saint. How is it the St. James is viewed as one of the "favorites"? Just how did the body get to Galicia?
They each feel compelled to talk about motivation for pilgrimage, motivations of others and for themselves. They speculate, too, about the reasons of those with whom they share the Road. And if either man appreciates his motivation at the end of the trail, neither mentions it. We do not hear the reentry blues that they may have sung once back on this continent. Is it that way for all pilgrims? Perhaps. The motivation is the last thing to clarify itself, except, perhaps, to some external viewer who can simplify the complexities we feel too closely to confront.
Both Hitt and Stanton began their pilgrimage on the St.-Jean - Roncesvalles route:
thus the chances for similar experiences are great. They both comment on similar moments:
For each moment, then, each writer offers a special viewpoint: Hitt always intellectually curious, like a boy picking the petals off a flower, and Stanton enmeshed in his emotive capabilities, always in contact with his visceral reactions.
Which brings us to the wonder of this thing called pilgrimage. Even in print, a pilgrimage narration transforms itself into a dialogue between writer and reader, the fellowship [society, community] of pilgrims expands beyond the actual Road. For this reviewer, who has made the pilgrimage four times, the books, individually and in the aggregate, began as books to be read as part of the monumental number of works about the pilgrimage for the bibliography that we continue to compile. But even before the end of the first chapter, that special "society of pilgrims," at whatever level one participates in it, awakened: I needed to say that don Javier had guided us across a maze of barbed-wire fence in 1974, before landowners would even grudgingly give up space for walking trails. I needed to add that in 1993 in Torres del Río we learned that don Ramón had fallen and been seriously injured. At that time he was in a large city's "casa de ancianos." He was not expected to live. The house was closed to pilgrims and we, too, trudged on after a brief rest. I wanted to tell Hitt that indeed the Pelerín was successful, attaining his own celebrity status. The 1993 Holy Year Route was littered with horses, mules, pilgrims. And residents along the Road occasionally mentioned a group with two mules from the previous year. It befalls the 1994 pilgrim to continue the history of the Road, the modern Road, which is made of people as well as places.
In a book review, one compares and contrasts and evaluates. One is supposed to view one work more deserving than the other. However, in the case of the 1992 pilgrimage to Compostela, as part of a continuum of 1000 kilometers and 1000 years and millions of pilgrims, it would be a mistake to do so. Here, even more so. If you have your own personal experiences, reading one and only one of these two books could make you querulous. If you have not yet walked to Santiago, you might be puzzled at the individual reactions. You want to complain that this particular pilgrim did it incorrectly. He should have done otherwise. He should have stayed. He should have walked on. No more about blisters. No more about the filmmaker or the woman sheep herder. Where Stanton is more emotive than Hitt, and Hitt is more insistent on the meaning of pilgrimage as it can be analyzed, one view does not cancel out nor annul the other.
Rather, it is in the reading of multiple works about the same experience that the arm-chair pilgrim again feels part of the community of pilgrims, where experiences are as diverse as the number of pilgrims who walk the Road; and you can once again feel the warmth of those Castillian trails and the soaking rain inside your poncho and the smiles of the people for whom you embraced the bust of the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela. And once again you are brought 'round to face those same questions that burned at you on the Road and that you brought back home in your backpack.
The conference was dedicated to bringing various groups together to discuss the goals of the cofradías and the intended role of the Archicofradía of the Compostela Cathedral. About 200 people attended, representing approximately 25 groups, mostly from Spain, but also from France, Perugia (Italy), Messina (Sicily, Italy), Belgium and Germany.
Speeches were given by both religious personnel (J. M. Díaz, the Cathedral's Archivist, and J. García Rodríguez, the Conference's organizer who takes charge of the Cathedral's pilgrimage ("Acogida de Peregrinos") Office) and several scholars, such as F. López Alsina, P. Caucci von Saucken, R. López López, and R. Plötz. There were two statistical summaries of the pilgrims who arrived during Holy Year 1993, with differing conclusions.
The last day of meetings was dedicated to often-heated discussion regarding the true nature/duties of the cofradías and to making the pilgrimage to Compostela the "true" experience that it is meant to be. For example, the Archicofradía will attempt to regulate the types of books sold in the Cathedral's tourist shop; many are new-age, magical, or questioning in nature. There is also some concern about the crowds and carnival-like atmosphere created at the door to the Cathedral shop, and the suggestion was made that the entrance directly into the Cathedral transept be closed off. Much focus is placed on these aspects with an eye to the 1999 Holy Year, the last in this millennium, which coincides with the Rome Jubilee in the year 2000.
Finally, on Sunday, 156 new members ("socios de número") were presented with the medallions of the Archicofradía at mass celebrated in the S.A.M.I. Cathedral, and presided by Cardenal Suquía and Bishop Julián Barrio. The daughter of Luis Vázquez de Parga, Margarita, received a medallion of "socio de honor" in the name of her father, who died in June 1994.
It is indeed true that the Archicofradía has re-begun publishing of their bulletin, Compostela. The articles are varied, written from both religious and scholarly points of view. Issue 2 (Jan. 1994) contains a great deal of information about the 99,000+ pilgrims to Compostela in 1993, while the 5th issue (Jan. 1995) gives a detailed review of the Encuentro itself. For subscriptions, try writing to the Archicofradía at: Plaza de la Quintana, Santiago de Compostela.
Friends of the Road to Santiago / Maryjane Dunn
1708 N. 54th Street
Omaha, Ne 68104
Maryjane Dunn
Friends of the Road to Santiago
1708 N. 54th Street
Omaha, Ne 68104
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Update us on your activities [related to the Pilgrimage Route]:
Linda Davidson, Secretary
2501 Kingstown Road
Kingston, RI 02881
401 782-1245
e-mail: davidson@uriacc.uri.edu
Thanks for your interest in the Road to Santiago and to the United States Association of its Friends ! We are a very loosely organized group of people interested in the phenomenon of the pilgrimage We are professors, physicians, students, retirees, authors. What unites us is our curiosity about the Route that spans all of Europe toward the northwest corner of Galicia.
Because we live from east coast to west, we do not have meetings, but we try to keep in contact with each other by means of a Newsletter, published irregularly, generally comes out once a year, but sometimes twice if there is enough news. In the Newsletter we review new books, occasionally print parts of personal narratives, announce interesting and germane conferences. Our goal is to keep you informed of developments, research and events that are in some way pertinent to the historical or contemporary Pilgrimage to Compostela.
We answer your letters and put members in contact with each other. We try to answer any questions about the Pilgrimage, and if we don't have complete information we try to find the answers or put you in contact with someone who does.
We ask annual dues of $3.00 [US] and $5.00 [foreign]: this pays for the newsletter duplication and postage.
If you are also interested in making the pilgrimage, by car, bike, on foot, we can facilitate your planning by suggesting suitable books and guides. Beginning April 1995 we will offer the Association's own "Pilgrim Passport" which you will need as you make the trip for official registration in Compostela and, if you are so inclined, the receipt of the Compostela.
We are enclosing a complementary newsletter for your perusal. If you decide to join the Association, please remit a check to "Friends of the Road to Santiago" and complete the attached form. All correspondence, dues and requests should be sent to the Secretary.
Thanks! We hope to hear from you again soon.
Friends of the Road to Santiago
Maryjane Dunn, President
1708 N. 54th St.
Omaha, NE 68104
402 554-1867
e-mail: mdunn@mccneb.neb.edu
Linda Davidson, Secretary
2501 Kingstown Road
Kingston, RI 02881
401 782-1245
e-mail: davidson@uriacc.uri.edu
To begin planning for the pilgrimage, we suggest the following general-interest articles:
Dalyrymple, William. "Pilgrimage to Galicia." Conde Nast Traveler (Aug. 1992). 11-26.
Winchester, Simon. "The long, sweet road to Santiago de Compostela." Smithsonian. 65-75.
The Spanish National Tourist Office in New York (phone: 212 759-8822) has one excellent brochure on the Road to Santiago, and tourist brochures on the more important sites (such as Compostela, León, Burgos, Pamplona).
The Xunta de Galicia, with an office in Madrid, also has interesting materials. Contact them at this address:
Casa de Galicia - Oficina de información turística
Casado del Alisal 8
28014 Madrid Spain
The are many, many guides to the Walk. We list 3 English-language works here. If you want a more extensive list, just let us know.
Bernes, Georges, Georges Veron, and L. Laborde Balen. The Pilgrim Route to Compostela. In Search of St. James. Trans. Robertson McCarta. 2nd rev. ed. London: Randonnées Pyrénéennes, 1990.
Jacobs, Michael. Architectural Guides for Travellers: The Road to Santiago de Compostela. London: Viking, 1991.
Valiña Sampedro, Elías. The Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago. Vigo: Galaxia, 1992.
If you wish to purchase a Spanish-language guide, we can suggest that you contact either of these bookstores
Marcial Pons
Tamayo y Baus, 7
28004 Madrid
Libraria Couceiro
Via Pasteur, R 13
Poligono Industrial do Tambre
15890 Santiago de Compostela
Lugo