How many nights do you sleep under a roof?
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Every night. An entire industry has grown up to tend to the prescribed (pilgrims). There are only a couple of places on the camino where you are more than five miles from a town and every two so far has at least one albergue, hotel, or hostal.[/QUOTE]
You funny, if you really think that industry is new. The whole road grew to tend to pilgrims: before places such as Puente la Reina (either one) or Burgos were founded in the Middle Ages, the most common method to arrive to Santiago was by boat. It was horribly unsafe, robbery and murder or being sold into slavery by whomever you’d hired to transport you not being the lesser danger, so a lot of money and tax exemptions went toward getting people to travel inland and making sure that they would have places to stay, get their feet tended to, etc.
And there has always been a mixture of conmen, robbers, those who are helpful because they can’t conceive of not being so and socially-preocupied folk among those catering to the pilgrims. Most weren’t as radical as those sailors, but it’s amazing how many people bought Roland’s spear from some hick in Roncesvalles.
The other guy did it last year and he has a guide book which really helps. I’m really more of a wing it kind of a person. But if I were on my own I’d have a guide too.
We traveled from the US. I flew from Reno to Seattle to Frankfort to Madrid. We met the next day in Madrid and took the train to Pomplona. The flight sucked but it was the best I could without spending far too much. The train part was a hoot.
I knew, pretty much, that there had been at least some Pellegrino related business all g the camino for hundreds of years. What I wanted to pass along was that it has grown to the point that you can always find a place to stay or eat about anywhere. Of course in the smaller towns there are fewer choices and you might have to push on to the next town but that doesn’t happen often.
She is right. The social part of it is what makes it work for me. You talk a few minutes to someone at a coffee break and when you see them again a couple of days later you are old friends. We have met some interesting people.
You always could, is what you appear to be missing. The French Road was created by kings building hostelries, villages and inns along what they reckoned would make a safe path. Very often, what the kings and queens paid for was the hostelries and villages, figuring that if you put two villages close enough to each other a path would grow; they didn’t need to spend money on the road itself (grading, what’s that?). The places to stay weren’t even something built simultaneously with the road as it is with modern highways, they were the tool by which the road was built.
Hi - hope the walk is going well. i just finished the camino last week and have joined SDMB to pass on a few albergues. When you get to Rabanel Del Camino try don’t go into the 1st 2 albergues as you enter town - walk up to the old church and behind it is the old albergue ran by the english confraternity of st james. they are very friendly and it’s in an ancient albergue dating from centuries ago, renovated in the late 1980’s. the nicest thing is that the monks from monastery next door perform the vespers at 7pm and there is a pilgrim blessing at the 9pm servive too. i’m not overly religious but when you hear the singing in the 12th century church it’s very moving.
will write more later - looking forward to hearing where you are. Buen camino!
I’m thinking about this in a desultory way. For those of you who have walked a significant portion of the camino, in which month did you go and how was the weather? Which gear did you turn out not to need, or wish you had?
I haven’t travelled it, but I can tell you the best months are April and early May: they’re the ones most likely to have sunny and not too hot weather. From mid-May to mid-September there’s danger of roasting; September can get pretty nasty wind-wise, specially on the Central Mesa and Galicia (so, more or less from Santo Domingo onward). The risk of forest fires is highest in late August and in September: this affects mostly Galicia, as the Mesa is pretty naked tree-wise and the early parts of the French Road don’t get as many fires as Galicia does.