the CAMINO vibe

CAN’T HEAD TO EUROPE FOR THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO? YOU CAN CRAFT A SMALL PILGRIMAGE CLOSE TO HOME.

- JAMES JEFFREY

Sometimes I worry the about becoming a Camino de Santiago pilgrimage addict. The Iberian Peninsula, after all, is littered with Camino routes stretching back into France and even Italy. The many routes reflect the myriad origins of medieval pilgrims heading toward the fabled city of Santiago de Compostela, claimed as the resting place of Saint James.

I did my first pilgrimage in 2017, completing the popular Camino Frances route that runs some 550 miles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Pyrenees beside the FrenchSpanish border through the mighty pastoral breadth of northern Spain’s interior toward Santiago and then on to Finisterre on Spain’s most western Galician coast.

But that was small fry compared to what I did during the global pandemic. When I arrived in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon at the end of 2020, the tap-tapping of my walking sticks on the pavement caused the trendy young things on the quayside watching the sunset to turn their heads my way. Behind me lay about 1,200 miles of multiple Caminos joined together.

From Bayonne in France I had hiked the Camino del Norte route, following Spain’s rugged northern coastline, before joining the Camino Primitivo, which drops from the coastline into the mountains before converging with the Camino Frances in its final approach to Santiago. Continuing to Finisterre and the coastline—the logical end of any peregrination—I did a sharp left and began the Camino Portuguese.