Chemin d’Arles / Via Tolosana to Santiago de Compostela

Near the Adagio Aparthotel in Aix-en-Provence there is a road called Route de Galice.  Galice?  Galicia?  Was this a pilgrim road connecting to the Camino de Santiago?  It isn’t a far-fetched idea since we ran across markings for the Camino in Switzerland.  It turns out that indeed there was a pilgrim route from Arles through Toulouse and over the Pyrenees that connected with the Camino Aragonés that runs through Jaca in Spain and connects with the Camino Frances at Puente la Reina.  And the significance of Arles was that it was also a starting point for the pilgrim route to Rome.

The road from Arles to Rome, the Via Aurelia, goes through Aix on its way to Genoa, Lucca, Siena and Rome and the Italian section was built by the Roman consul Gaius Aurelius Cotta in 241 BC.  In 13 BC the road was extended to Arles, a significant Roman town, by the Emperor Augustus.  Recently a hiking route has been mapped out (Grandes Randonnee GR653-A) to trace it but it goes up into the Maritime Alps rather than through Nice and the coastal cities.  I can’t imagine the Romans building a road through the mountains when they could go along the coast line.  But maybe the new route is to appeal to hikers and avoid the cities and towns.  One hiking blog mentioned that on parts of the trail he didn’t see a single person, and this was in August, the height of the tourist season, but maybe they were avoiding the heat.

If you want to explore the route more closely, Les Amis des Chemins de Compostelle et de Rome offer an interactive map.  Their website is in French but with Google Translate…. We will let you know if we run across any scallop shells.

Camino here we come!

We bit the bullet this morning and used our AAdvantage miles to book the trip to Madrid.  We'll be walking the first two weeks of May like we did in 2007 but we won't start walking on May 1st.  Instead we'll make sure that we have hotel accommodations for May 1st.  Now we have to decide whether we are going to book the accommodations on our own or go the easier and more expensive way of having a company, like Camino Ways, do it for us.  And we will pray fervently that it doesn't rain in rainy Galicia the two weeks we are there.  No, the rain in Spain does not fall mainly on the plains but on the hills of Galicia.

Although we won't be starting in Leon, we'd like to spend some time there before the trip.  Then we can take the bus to Sarria for the last 100 km that we need to walk for our "compostela".  That should take six days if we follow this itinerary from Camino Ways:

1. Sarria to Portomarín - 22km (13.2 miles) 
2. Portomarín to Palas de Rei - 22 km (13.2 miles)
3. Palas de Rei to Melide - 15 km (9 miles)
4. Melide to Arzúa - 13 km (7.8 miles)
5. Arzúa to Amenal - 23 km (13.8 miles)
6. Amenal to Santiago - 14 km (8.4 miles)

Our Walking Record on the Camino

I want to be realistic about how far we can walk each day.  In 2007, when we were 8 years younger, this was our mileage (granted Fernando had major foot problems):
Roncesvalles to Zubiri (rocky, muddy and in the rain): 22.2 km or 13 1/3 miles.
Pamplona to Uterga: 16.8 km (10 miles). (up over a mountain)
Uterga to Puente la Reina: 10.1 km (6 miles). (very easy)
Estella to Los Arcos: 22.7 km (13.6 miles) - without pack this was most enjoyable
Los Arcos to Viana: 19 km (11.4 miles)

If we can keep it at 20 km without packs, we should do OK, as long as we start out early or have reservations at each refugio/hostal so we don't arrive at our destination with no place to stay, like we did at the beginning of our Camino in 2007.  We won't start out on May 1st and we will have reservations for that day, which means we need to carry a cell phone.  One that works.  The following is assuming a 3 mph walk.  Let's also assume a 2.5 mph walk, but no less than that!

1.  Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo: 23.7 km (14.22 miles) (4.74 hours) (5.69 hours)
2.  Villafranca to Vega del Valcarce: 19.7 km (11.82 miles) (3.94 hours) (4.73 hours)
3.  Vega del Valcarce to O Cebreiro: 11.2 km (6.72 miles) (2.24 hours) (2.69 hours)
4.  O Cebreiro to Triacastela: 20.7 km (12.42 miles) (4.14 hours) (4.97 hours)
5.  Triacastela to Sarria: 25 km (15 miles) (5 hours) (6 hours)
6.  Sarria to PortoMarin: 22.9 km (13.74 miles) (4.58 hours) (5.5 hours)
7.  Portomarin to Palas de Rei: 26.1 km (15.66 miles) (5.22 hours) (6.26 hours)
8.  Palas de Rei to Melide: 15.3 km (9.18 miles) (3.06 hours) (3.67 hours)
9.  Melide to Arzua: 14.1 km (8.46 miles) (2.82 hours) (3.38)
10. Arzua to Pedrouzo (Arca do Pino): 19.2 km (11.2 miles) (3.84 hours) (4.48 hours)
11. Pedrouzo (Arca do Pino) to Santiago: 20.6 km (12.36 miles (4.12 hours) (4.94 hours)

So that is 11 days of easy walking, more or less.  In 2007 we used the luggage transfer service Jacotrans from Estella to Los Arcos.  The Leon office has a list of albergues/hostales from which they pick up luggage.  I'll have to check them out, although the idea of making reservations in advance makes me uneasy.  What if we don't make it to our destination???

O Cebreiro to Santiago?

O Cebreiro from the Trepidatious Traveller

I'm not completely convinced about starting our walk in this little stone village at the Galician/Leon y Castilla border, which I assume is popular because it is the first town in Galicia and more or less at the top of a mountain.  I've been reading blog posts and looking at videos about this last section of the Camino just to get an idea of what we will be up against.  My blog is my thinking pad.

The Trepidatious Traveller (60 year-old English woman living in Spain) did the whole Camino Frances from St. Jean Pied de Port with her daughter in 2013.  She was worried that as soon as she reached Sarria (a bit closer to Santiago than O Cebreiro), the way would get crowded with "day trippers" (like us) just doing the minimum required for the Compostela (certificate).  She did not find that to be the case and she did long days (25-30 km/15-18 miles), stopping later in the afternoon and was always able to find a place to stay.  She did go in May when it is less crowded and she did stay in towns that aren't the standard stopping places.

Even more reassuring are some Youtube videos from a Spanish family (father, mother and teenage daughter) that filmed parts of 9 daily stages from Ponferrada to Santiago.  They went in August, the Spanish vacation month, so it should have been the most crowded, yet in the videos the Camino doesn't look crowded at all.  In fact, the Camino looked more crowded when we were doing the Camino in 2007 from Roncesvalles to Logrono.

Shall we book the flight?  US Airways from Pittsburgh to Madrid is $1083.80/person, leaving May 5th and returning May 19th.   Or we could use our American Advantage miles, except each way, leaving April 29th and returning May 12th is 20K and we only have 70K right now.  We better hurry up and spend more money on the AA credit card!  Usually we have no problem with that...  Stay tuned!!