Slouching towards Santiago (The Second Coming)

 

As per my last trip to Santiago two years ago, Galicia was a highlight. The camino in Galicia can be challenging in many parts as it moves through dark mysterious oak forests, crossing over tiny rivulets with ancient stone bridges, sometimes descending through ravines, at other times climbing its way along windy ridges and mountain passes, it becomes obvious that the camino has been designed primarily as a pedestrian thoroughfare since time immemorial.

(as usual, click pictures to embiggen)

Nevertheless, by going slowly and walking when obstacles such as stairs or narrow passages present themselves, the Camino is perfectly navigable with a mountain bicycle with suspension. However, I am taking it slowly. Whereas I could take the infrequently trafficked National roads, or the sub roads which hardly anyone except farmers on Vespas ever use, I make it a point to stick to the Camino, despite the technical difficulties, because it travels through stunning scenery which anyone in a car would miss, and because at this point there is no urgency. At times, as necessary, the Camino does join the aforementioned paved routes, mostly where rivers need to be crossed, or where larger towns are encountered. While this can break up the intense Medieval revery of the Camino, the welcome sight of a well-prepared meal at a sidewalk cafe more than makes up for the intrusion of the real world in this journey.

The Camino Sanabres, unlike the Camino Frances, is very infrequently travelled, getting less than 5% of the total traffic which might go to Santiago in a year. The more usual route, equally historic, is to take the Via de la Plata all the way up to Astorga, where it connects with the Camino Frances, and continue West to Santiago. The particular path I have chosen is one of the six official routes through Galicia, the most obscure, which is the most southern route in the Camino from Seville, and has the added advantage that I will not be retracing any ground which I covered two years ago.

Whereas there are many parts of the Camino de la Plata which, though beautiful in their own way, are most definitely best done with a bicycle to lessen the unnecessary drudgery of covering hundreds of kilometers of open countryside, beautiful, but very similar, Galicia is such a place that invites one to doddle, and a bicycle, if used without discretion, could be a disadvantage; it can all become a green blur punctuated by stunning Romanesque churches half overgrown in dark forests, or lonely deserted hill-top monasteries.

For this reason I travel very slowly, hardly much faster than a walking pace for the most part, and thoroughly enjoy the incredible beauty of the land and tiny villages. Everything is very well marked, despite the little use this route gets, with both new and ancient millenariums; blocks of stone which point directions and give distances, at every kilometer.

The tiny villages, nestled in their obscure oak forests, or surrounded by tiny fields demarcated by stone walls, with their tiny thatched houses made of the same grey stone, invariable have slow drifts of smoke wafting lazily from their chimneys. This only adds to the continuous mist which burns off near the middle of the day, if at all, giving all of Galicia a timeless other-worldly quality, impossibly Celtic, to the point where one suddenly expects to be confronted by hobbits, or some other Tolkeinesque character. In my tireless search for the authentic, Galicia never fails to impress.