Day 41 - O Pedrouza to Santiago de Compostela!
Date: Thursday July 25
Start: O Pedrouzo, Galicia
End: Santiago de Compostela, Galicia
Daily Mileage: 12.1mi (19.5km)
Total Mileage: ~522mi (~840km)
Our final day to Santiago de Compostela!
This morning we decided to get up (very) early for the final leg into Santiago de Compostela. This made a lot of sense when we planned it, but ended up being unnecessary, as we would find out when we arrived to the Catedral de Santiago. More on that later...
For now, we were up and walking down the road by 6:20am. Still dark, the road lights illuminated bits of the route until we hit the trail. Dark under the cover of trees, I dug out my headlamp for the first time on this journey. I’d originally brought it along just in case I needed a light while in the albergues, though never expected to do any hiking in the dark. Albergues, obviously, ended up being a very small part of our story out here.
Both of us had muscles/tendons that were quite sore at this point, the sixth and last day of a stretch of mostly long mileage days to reach Santiago de Compostela on Saint James Day, a goal that had shortened our original timeframe when setting out from Ribadeo by two days. To make matters worse, the day wasn’t exactly an easy stroll. While there were no major climbs, there were plenty of shorter hills, sometimes fairly steep, which were putting a lot of pressure on my aching shins. I needed new shoes, stat.
If I’d hoped to have a nice, peaceful, reflective walk on our final day into Santiago de Compostela, these plans were quickly deflated. We certainly weren’t the only ones getting an early start, something that I’d already anticipated. Many pilgrims started out early on their last day into Santiago in order to make it in time for the noon pilgrim’s mass, the most popular of several masses held throughout the day.
What I did not anticipate was how many people would be nearly racing to get to there. A couple examples from the morning. A little over an hour into our walk, I stopped along the side of the trail to take photo of a stele that said Santiago and had the scallop shell design emblematic of the trail. Within the few extra seconds it took to stop for this quick photo, a woman rushed up behind me to take her own photo – which I’m pretty sure my back must have been in – and hurried away, madly stomping her one trekking pole into the ground. You haven’t got a few seconds to wait for a photo? You’re booking yourself too tight.
Later, as I hiked up an incline, another woman was coming up quickly behind me. I could hear her labored breathing long before I could hear her footsteps. She was going to an extreme amount of effort to race up this hill. Relax, lady – we have over nine miles left. As the trail flattened out at the crest of the hill, I continued on. I could still hear her heavy breathing approaching, the sounds now punctuated by... heavy chewing. She had somehow, in all of this effort, produced a bag of chips and was now trying to eat, despite the fact that it sounded like she could barely breath.
Shawn was waiting for me alongside the trail ahead. Though I made no movement of my head, I looked at him and then made a hard eye roll all the way to the left, as if trying to look behind me, motioning silently toward the woman that was hard charging up the trail behind me. He understood and glanced at her briefly, like some sort of circus act passing by. He motioned for me to stop.
Only 10k to go!
I stepped off the trail by him, and we let her, the heavy breathing, and the chip crunching pass by us, waiting for a moment before we started walking again ourselves. Just up the road, we would see her again, racing for a small table with a stamp set up outside of a cafe. She produced her pilgrim credential as quickly as if it had been in her hand the whole time. This was a woman on a mission. Stamp in the book, she was up the road.
Judging from the sounds of breathing and the very high cadence strides of hikers that seemed to be in quite a hurry, you would think it was a race to Santiago. The first one there wins... nothing!
Rather than a peaceful morning, the atmosphere seemed stressed.
And, naturally, with a lot of hikers on the road, there were plenty of trekking poles at use. One man in particular was hiking with only one pole, but seemed to feel the need to forcefully jab it into the pavement with every single step. When one arm tired of this exercise, he would switch the pole to the other, and then back again. I almost couldn’t believe how loud his pole clacks were as he came up behind me. You show that pavement whose boss!
“Buenos dias,” he said as he walked by. Is it? Is it a good morning for you? I mean, it’s just so peaceful out here.
When I caught up to Shawn, I assumed that the man with the trekking pole death stab must have also went by him, but he said no, he hadn’t had such a person come by. He would know it. And then, I heard it. The man was behind us again, coming our way. UGH. He must have stopped. And now the torture would resume afresh. This is my nightmare!
Again the man caught up and passed us with a monotone “buenos dias”. He is taunting me. Finally we were able to get ahead of him along the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela when he took a short detour to take a photo over the hillsides of the city.
The route dropped from a nice walk along open fields and park land to a bridge over a highway, leading into the fringes of the built city. To welcome us were some nice spray painted words on the sidewalk. While I don’t remember the entire phrase, part of it was “You are part of the problem. Fuck the Camino.”
There have been a lot of battles over tourism in Spain, lately. Just a couple weeks ago we heard about groups in Barcelona out protesting tourism, some of them spraying tourists with water guns outside of popular attractions. I have no doubt that in a city like Santiago de Compostela, there would be some locals that tired of the 2,000+ pilgrims arriving daily during the high season. Yet Spain, Galicia, and Santiago de Compostela specifically, throw out the welcome mat for pilgrims and tourists in their marketing. Obviously not everyone feels this way.
On our way across the bridge, suddenly I could hear it. The man with the trekking pole, his stabs at the pavement slowly chiseling a hole into my brain.
I think all of us have little daydreams of what we would like to do in these type of situations, when someone is driving us mad. At this moment, mine went a little something like this:
Man approaches loudly pounding his trekking pole along the pavement.
Me: Oh hey, that is a really nice trekking pole. Can I see it?
Man: Sure [hands over pole]
Me: Yeah – [looks intently over the pole, spinning it in hand a bit, weighing it up] - really nice.
With a running start, and a mighty throw, I exuberantly chuck the pole far into the forest. It spins dramatically, landing far away in dense underbrush. Maybe over a cliff, if I can really engineer the setting of this saga.
Me: I’m sorry, I dropped it. Enjoy your hike! It’s so peaceful out here.
I continue down the trail.
Of course, I know – in reality – how mean this would be. But that does’t stop us from briefly entertaining our wildest hopes and wishes, does it? That little badass inside all of us that we wish we had the cajones to act upon sometimes. But won’t.
Luckily, the sounds of the city would soon drown out his sharp staccato down the sidewalk. And we wouldn’t see him again until later in the city center, when even then we could pick out that sharp clack through the crowd, but this time we could quickly escape it.
The outskirts of Santiago were gritty. Buildings were worn. Weeds grew through the cracks in the sidewalk. Despite being the entrance to the city for so many pilgrims, it was clear that the city was not spending its tourism dollars here.
As we moved toward the historical center, the beauty of the city began to show through. There were stone building and stone paved laneways. Arched doorways and regal historic architecture.
The Camino de Santiago routes technically end at the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Saint James are believed to be buried. Most pilgrims end their hikes on the large plaza in front of the cathedral, Plaza Obradoiro, taking photos with the cathedral in the background in celebration of their achievement. We head for the plaza (actually ‘praza’ in Galician).
Monasterio de San Martiño Pinario, Praza da Immaculada
Unfortunately for us, this final step was going to be impossible. While we had read a blog that made it sound like walking into Santiago on Saint James Day would be the best thing since sliced bread, we did not find this to be the case.
Approaching the Cathedral, a gaita (similar to a bagpipe, but smaller) wailed as we walked down the steps through an archway toward the plaza, setting an almost haunting, dramatic tone for the finish of our journey. I don’t think I would be alone in associating bagpipes with sadness – it seems you only hear them at mournful events and moments in the appropriate movies. I’m not sure bagpipes were the atmosphere I was looking for, but as a region of Spain with Celtic roots, they certainly weren’t out of place. It was at least a very unique entrance to the plaza.
Fountain of Horses, Praza das Praterías
Then we were stopped. No one was allowed onto the plaza with backpacks. ‘Large backpacks’, to be precise. Like - the kind everyone was hiking with. This definition of ‘large’ seemed to be fluid though and seemingly up to the interpretation of the various officers guarding the many entrances onto the plaza. To be fair, our packs are actually pretty small compared to a lot of the packs people are carrying. But hiking backpacks in general were being turned away.
The reason for the extra ‘security’ today was that there was a special mass for Saint James Day at noon, for which the King of Spain was in attendance. And so, ‘large backpacks’ were not allowed onto the plaza. Mind you, small to medium sized backpacks, purses, and shopping bags of all sizes were fine. I just needed to find a giant ZARA bag to put my backpack in...
Photo from behind the cathedral, Praza da Quintana. (Also, honorable mention to Shawn’s hiking shirt, which started the Camino with him and ended with me.)
This was a huge bummer. Everyone wanted to finish their hike in the center of the plaza, backpacks in tow, for their final photos. It seemed ironic really, that on a day celebrating Saint James, the very saint whom this entire pilgrimage was based upon, pilgrims would not be allowed into the square.
Seeing that some backpacks seemed to be getting through, we tried our luck at each of the entrances onto the plaza. Nada. We were not getting there. I stopped my watch along the outskirts of the plaza. This was the end of the line for us. We took some photos from the fringes of the cathedral where we could. One from a plaza behind the cathedral. One from the back of the main plaza, the cathedral in the background, just outside where backpack sizes were being policed. What a bummer.
Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, Praza do Obradoiro – as close as we could get to the cathedral for now.
If anyone is actually reading this blog for planning purposes (which I doubt!), I honestly wouldn’t recommend arriving in Santiago de Compostela on Saint James Day unless you’re really set on trying to get into that special mass. Otherwise, if you’re hiking in around that timeframe, I’d probably recommend coming in on the eve of Saint James Day, when there are no special events or masses that close the plaza to backpacks – and there is the added benefit of the evening fireworks show, which would certainly be a cool way to end your Camino. After already speeding up our plans by two days, there was really no way to reduce our hiking time by an additional day, though also - we had been so convinced this was a great day to arrive!
A bit defeated, we walked down to the Pilgrim’s Reception Office, which might be the only institution that in Spain that runs with any sort of efficiency. We’d registered our hikes before arriving, so after showing our QR code, we were given a number in line and placed in a very fast moving queue to the central office, where – like the DMV – once our numbers popped up, we went to the appropriate desk.
The final stamp in the Pilgrim Credential. Also, yes – I have a stamp from a gelato shop. Who doesn’t?
After a couple of questions about our starting point and a very brief look through our stamped Pilgrim’s Credential booklet, within seconds we were each holding our Compostela, the document that certified our completion of the pilgrimage. Written in Latin, it included our finish date and a lot of things that I can’t read. My given name, Katherine, was spelled as ‘Catherinam’, which I’m not sure is even correct as a Latin translation, or just a typo. Whatever. At least Catherinam Bradley had officially completed this pilgrimage. Whoever she was.
Compostela
We also received our distance certificates. These were written in Spanish and included our origin in Irún, our start and finish dates, and the official distance of the Camino del Norte from Irún to Santiago de Compostela, which –at 828km – wasn’t too far off of the 840km that we’d actually hiked.
Distance Certificate
All of this action happened so quickly you scarcely had time to think about it. I made sure my name (minus the Latin version) and the dates on the documents were correct and then we went to the checkout. While the Compostela was free, the distance certificate cost a couple of euros. They also bagged a couple extra euros by selling small document tubes for everyone to carry their papers home in safely. What a business.
And speaking of business, while there had been almost no real commercialization of the trail along the Camino del Norte until it merged with the Camino Frances – other than one cafe that had a few trinkets on our day from Ribadeo to Lourenzà – here in Santiago, there were Camino souvenir and trinket shops everywhere. You couldn’t throw a stick in the city center without hitting one. The Camino is big business here.
Small plaza area behind the Pilgrim’s Reception Office
While pilgrims were shuffled through the lines in the Pilgrim Center very quickly, out back there was a nice patio and garden where you could sit and relax, collect yourself, and roll up your papers for placement into the little green tubes we’d now see everyone carrying around.
We sat for a few minutes before making our way out of the city center to a cafe for a late breakfast and coffee, something I’d been very anxious to get for a while now. Setting off early this morning, we’d missed our morning coffee and, while I’m no coffee fiend and certainly don’t need it, I was feeling quite tired this morning. The six day stretch of long hiking days, the early wake up, the sorry state of my shoes – and now very sore shins. Shawn, despite having newer shoes, also had his own aches and pains after the last long six days.
While busy, we were able to get seats at the cafe to finally relax and enjoy nice big mugs of coffee and some breakfast bagel sandwiches.
Like many of the hikes we’d done, the end had seemed a bit anticlimactic. I know many who are overcome with emotion at the end of these types of journeys – long hard efforts over multiple days or months. For Shawn and I, while the distance had been great, most of this hike had felt like a treat, with the ability to sleep in beds every night, eat in restaurants, and start (nearly) every day with coffee before setting out.
Rúa das Hortas
We also had not set out on the Camino with any intention for a religious, spiritual, or even profound personal journey. We simply like to walk and see what happens along the way. Unlike many who take on long hikes or journeys of other sorts, I am not looking for any sort of transformation. While it’s undeniable that I will still learn and grow in some ways, we did not enter the journey seeking anything other than escape from the misery of the CDT. Which we did find, so mission accomplished.
But even when we have finished longer, harder hikes – like our nearly five months on the PCT – I’ve always been a bit underwhelmed at the finish. At a time when many feel intense emotion or cry tears of joy, I’ve struggled to feel anything as momentous as the moment might evoke for others. It’s hard to place so much pressure on an individual moment.
Catedral de Santiago de Compostela
For this particular hike, it had been a let down that we weren’t able to make our final steps into the plaza, which wouldn’t be fully open for several more hours until the special mass was over. It’s true that we could have stowed our backpacks somewhere – like the Pilgrim’s Reception Office – and walked onto the plaza without them, but it didn’t feel the same. Your backpack, in some ways, is part of your travel identity. It’s the little home that you’ve carried along with you. And, while it’s just ‘stuff’ – as we noted when we burned much of this stuff into a sad little crusty pile at a laundromat along the way – it’s a part of your hike. Everyone wants to walk into that plaza and finish the hike with the pack that they have carried over every other mile of the hike.
More generally, for me, the idea of finishing a long journey with a set ending is certainly exciting – it’s an achievement, I know – but I care less about this. I think mostly it’s because, without trying to sound really cliché or corny, I really do enjoy the journey. The ‘end’ has less meaning to me. It was all the ‘stuff’ that happened along the way that made it so great. All the interesting things you saw and experienced and melted and learned. And all the people that you met. As I also said at the end of the PCT, what would make the ‘end’ more momentous, actually, is if you could bundle up all those characters that you met along the way, and transport them to the finish with you. That would, at the very least, be a lot of fun.
I do not want to be here for whatever is about to happen with these giant puppets.
After our time at the cafe, we made one more stop back through the plaza area, but they still were not allowing backpacks through. We made our way around the outskirts of the plaza, through the throngs of people and entertainment happening in some of the smaller surrounding plazas, to our hotel, which Shawn had booked just outside of the historic center – a good idea during this busy time of festivities.
Luckily, we were able to check in early – and our room was on the ground floor – no stairs! What a treat. We cleaned up and relaxed in the room for a bit before venturing back out in the late afternoon for lunch.
Very cool old map in our hotel.
To celebrate our finish, we found a well-rated tapas restaurant and shared several dishes, including the delicious Galician scallops, the emblematic shell of the Camino. Admittedly these were mostly for me. Despite trying one, it came as no surprise that Shawn still doesn’t like scallops! Pity for him, but more for me.
Before we’d even finished lunch, I was already searching for an heladeria (ice cream shop). It seems I found the right one because when we arrived there was a long line that crossed the street. We took our places at the end. The wait, as it turned out, was worth it, the ice cream very flavorful and creamy.
Later in the evening, I joined the throngs for the 7pm pilgrim’s mass. The Catedral de Santiago de Compostela actually holds four pilgrim’s masses each day, though – due to the special Saint James Day mass today, the most popular mass at noon had not happened. Pilgrims could attend the special mass, however the lines for this mass were so long, I can’t imagine everyone was actually able to get into the cathedral.
As I’ve already mentioned in this blog. I am not religious in the slightest. And I’m certainly not Catholic. Or a good enough Spanish speaker to understand much of what would be said at a religious service conducted in Spanish. So why attend a mass?
My motivations were really two-fold. First and foremost, I was really hoping that they would swing the giant botafumerio.
Altar within Catedral de Santiago de Compostela. The silver ball hanging from the ceiling in the middle is the botafumerio.
The botafumerio is massive silver-plated brass incense burner that hangs on a rope from the ceiling at the center of the altar. In a ritual dating back to the 12th century, the silver orb is filled with incense and coal and set in motion with great precision, requiring eight men, called Tiraboleiros, to operate it.
The botafumerio used today dates back to 1851 and weighs 53 kg (117 lbs) when empty and up to 10 kg (22 lbs) more when full. In only a minute and a half, the swinging botafumerio forms an impressive 65-meter-long arched trajectory along the cathedral, reaching a speed of 68km per hour (42mph). It seemed like something worth witnessing.
Better picture of the botafumerio from the side.
The incense was historically used to fumigate the terrible smell of the pilgrims, many of whom arrived sick and diseased after their long journey to Santiago de Compostela. (Other than achy shins, I was feeling fine, by the way). Today it’s generally used on special dates and for important liturgical celebrations such as Christmas Day and Saint James Day. It certainly would have been used at the special mass at noon today, though there was little to no chance we would have made it into that mass (and we certainly didn’t want to stand in line for hours as many were doing when we arrived to the cathedral). But, I held out some hope that maybe they would also swing it at the evening pilgrim’s mass.
To spare you any suspense, they did not. Though it was hanging from the ceiling, so I was at least able to see it at rest, if not in action.
Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, Praza do Obradoiro
The other reason for attending the mass, for me, was really just to see the interior of the cathedral. We had come all this way. And, while it wasn’t a religious journey for us, I do enjoy seeing the architecture of some of these larger-than-life religious structures – both the exterior and interior. So, as I sat through a mass delivered in Spanish, having little understanding of what was happening (willful ignorance, really – probably better that it was in Spanish), and discovering that mass included a lot more standing than I realized, when over two hundred people got in line for communion, I conceded – I’ve made a mistake. I could have easily stopped into the cathedral at some other hour of the day to see the interior without attending a mass. But then I definitely wouldn’t have had a chance to see the swinging botafumerio.
It was nice to see the interior of the cathedral, cherubic angels gracing its every corner, but I was very happy when the mass was over. Shawn had probably made the right call, staying back at the hotel, not wanting to walk around on his aching tendon any longer.
After the service, I went out to the main plaza, which you were now able to freely visit carrying whatever you would like. There were hundreds of people spread out through the space, many groups of pilgrims taking photos and celebrating their journeys, some sitting in the shade along the edges of the plaza, others plopped down on the ground wherever, simply staring at the cathedral and enjoying the evening. I snapped a few photos, but would need to return again later with Shawn.
Sunset from Belvis Park
After returning to the hotel briefly, I made one more trip out for the evening, making a short walk up to a nearby convent from which there was a nice view of the sun setting over Santiago de Compostela and the spires of the cathedral.
While, after 41 days, we’d made it to Santiago de Compostela and finished the Camino del Norte, our journey isn’t quite finished yet. More on that after a couple days of rest...