Strange and lonely day today, but we made it out of the Camino del Norte and into the Camino Francés.
It’s a double-edged feeling though: we left the relative peace and quiet of the Norther route to finally enter the frey of the mass of pilgrims, all flowing into Santiago.
The contrast between the earlier part of today and the last hour of march, after we arrived on the Francés, could not have been starker.
As a matter of fact, for the first 18 km we hadn’t seen a single pilgrim: this happened because we took a “shortcut” from Boimorto to Brea, skipping Arzúa, where the Camino del Norte traditionally flows into the Camino Francés. Our guide book suggested this, and we followed that advice. The idea was to delay as long as possible the inevitable flow of pilgrims who crowd the Camino in the last 100 km of the Francés.
As I was saying, this shortcut worked so well that we walked entirely on our own for the best part of the day. The way itself, however, got quite boring very quickly: straight asphalt road, between endless rows of eucalyptus trees, covered in fog.
That fog was our saving grace, however, because a sunny day like yesterday would have killed us. There were no bars, no points where to stop, nothing but a few empty houses and a couple of churches. Just asphalt, trees and fog, for hours.
It kind of reminded me of the mesetas at some point. At least this time Laura was with me and I didn’t have to talk solely to my own shadow.
We didn’t have to guess when our shortcut eventually ended. Suddenly we saw a lot of pilgrims walking in front of us, and we knew we had arrived at the junction of the two Camino.
To be fair, instinctively I was happy to get to the Camino Francés, at least for a few minutes. I had a warm feeling inside of me, especially knowing that we were just 25 km away from Santiago.
This faded out pretty soon, however, after a couple of loud groups and Bluetooth speakers.
It’s inevitable to quickly become estranged with all the pilgrims you haven’t already met. Such is the effect of mass tourism on the Camino. Luckily we bumped into Jürgen, which was nice, and we will surely meet some of the other folks tomorrow.
Tonight we are staying in a hotel close to O Pino, about 24 km away from Santiago. Since we had a fairly large lunch, the idea is to go to bed very early, basically skipping dinner, and start walking during the night, in order to avoid as many people as possible.
It will be the opposite from yesterday, when we went to a local bar in Boimorto and had a good time chatting with a young Italian couple. After that, we had some very abundant dinner and, before we left, even had some time to mingle with older locals at a bar. There, we learned about the Galician tradition to drink white Ribeiro wine in a small bowl, a.k.a. a “cunca”. One of the men even paid a cunca de Ribeiro for us, so that we could partake in that tradition. What a pleasant little moment that was.
But now all the focus is on tomorrow and our final stage.
We are very close, just a few hours away from Santiago.
I don’t know exactly what to expect from seeing that cathedral again. Much and more has changed from 2013, mostly for the better luckily.
I know that it will be a moment to remember, however. Of that, at least, I’m sure.
Ultreya!