Aurigny
Active Member
- Time of past OR future Camino
- Francés; Português Central; Português Interior; Primitivo; Português da Costa; Invierno; Gebennensis
I didn't expect to have any free time until the summer of next year at the earliest. Having chalked up one long (Francés) and one short (Portugués Central) pilgrimage, there wasn't an obvious follow-up on the horizon for me in any event. I'd flirted with the notion of taking a crack at the Via Gebennensis in 2019 or 2020, though the amount of time it would take—sixty days at a minimum—would have required an immense amount of advance planning to enable me to clear my calendar for that length of time.
Having worked for six months without a single day off, however, I was sorely in need of some spiritual renewal. My employer—a cold and stony-hearted entity at the best of times—could hardly deny that I had earned it. With a little moving-around of my schedule, and putting in the appropriate amount of overtime beforehand, I found that it would be possible for me to disappear for two weeks this year. Encouraged by my nearest and dearest, therefore, I've decided to see if I can complete the interior Portugués—largely, it must be confessed, on the basis of its length. There aren't many middle-distance routes out there; the coastal Portugués (on which I spent a day last January before getting bored with all the water and abandoning it for the Central) doesn't appeal; and I have one of those personality defects that stands in the way of my starting a route this year and finishing it next. So the CPI it is.
I'm bound to say, though, that it's shaping up to be a very different experience from either of my previous two trips to SdC. While I may be mistaken about this, it doesn't appear as though a guide exists in any language. No reassuring presence of Saint John B, holding my hand and letting me know to one decimal place how far it is to the next source of fizzy drinks. I do have the excellent set of field notes posted here by Grace the Pilgrim, of this parish (hereinafter GB); some basic night-stop-and-distance information provided by the http://urcamino.com website; and its Portuguese equivalent at http://cpisantiago.pt, which doesn't appear to have been updated in quite a while. But the overall impression I've been getting is that while a certain level of infrastructure exists in some places at least, a lot of the time one is more or less on one's own.
This seems to be what I'm finding at the starting point of Viseu, a medium-sized city in north-central Portugal. I was informed that at present it lacks an albergue. For the moment, pilgrims can be accommodated at the barracks of the 14th Infantry Regiment in exchange for a small donation to a worthy cause. The prospect was appealing, and briefly tempted me, but knowing military guys as I do, I predicted an endless evening of convivial company, vivid conversation, the possibility of adult beverages, and practically no sleep. Hence prioritising the mission, as all good strategists, armchair and otherwise, ought to do, I reluctantly set aside that beguiling option and repaired to the only other non-commercial alternative, the Pousada de Juventude on the east side of town.
Here I met with my first surprise. The youth hostel (EUR 14 a night; open until midnight; games annexe that closes at 18:00) is not only a logical starting point for the pilgrim route, but a yellow arrow is visibly painted on the pavement outside. Yet the nice woman behind the desk, when I asked her to frank my credencial, expressed puzzlement at the request and told me that the hostel didn't possess a rubber stamp. She'd never been asked, she said, for such a thing in the past. In conversation with other people around town, I was to find that this ignorance was general. Both the cathedral and the tourist office having closed before my 'bus arrived in town, and not being willing to hang around until 10:00 tomorrow when they reopened, I made my way to the central police station about ten minutes' walk away and explained my predicament to the officers at the door. They too had never heard of the pilgrimage route or the practice of stamping credencials, but they grasped the concept quickly enough. When they re-emerged from the office, my booklet bore the imprint of the Escuadra de Trânsito of the Comando da Polícia de Segurança Publíca to prove that I had indeed been in Viseu.
All well and good, and I was and am very grateful to them. But I couldn't help noticing that other than the distance-marker in the cathedral square, and the yellow arrows proceeding therefrom, there's nothing I can see in this city to indicate any connection with, or awareness of, the Caminho de Santiago. Everyone with whom I spoke, from waitresses to shopkeepers, disclaimed any knowledge of it. Nor was the usual gimcrack rubbish on sale in even the smallest northern Spanish towns—arrow-emblazoned T-shirts, scallop-shell refrigerator magnets et hoc genus omne—anywhere in evidence.
We'll see how things go. But it's starting to become clear that I shouldn't expect a great deal of hand-holding on this particular trip.
Having worked for six months without a single day off, however, I was sorely in need of some spiritual renewal. My employer—a cold and stony-hearted entity at the best of times—could hardly deny that I had earned it. With a little moving-around of my schedule, and putting in the appropriate amount of overtime beforehand, I found that it would be possible for me to disappear for two weeks this year. Encouraged by my nearest and dearest, therefore, I've decided to see if I can complete the interior Portugués—largely, it must be confessed, on the basis of its length. There aren't many middle-distance routes out there; the coastal Portugués (on which I spent a day last January before getting bored with all the water and abandoning it for the Central) doesn't appeal; and I have one of those personality defects that stands in the way of my starting a route this year and finishing it next. So the CPI it is.
I'm bound to say, though, that it's shaping up to be a very different experience from either of my previous two trips to SdC. While I may be mistaken about this, it doesn't appear as though a guide exists in any language. No reassuring presence of Saint John B, holding my hand and letting me know to one decimal place how far it is to the next source of fizzy drinks. I do have the excellent set of field notes posted here by Grace the Pilgrim, of this parish (hereinafter GB); some basic night-stop-and-distance information provided by the http://urcamino.com website; and its Portuguese equivalent at http://cpisantiago.pt, which doesn't appear to have been updated in quite a while. But the overall impression I've been getting is that while a certain level of infrastructure exists in some places at least, a lot of the time one is more or less on one's own.
This seems to be what I'm finding at the starting point of Viseu, a medium-sized city in north-central Portugal. I was informed that at present it lacks an albergue. For the moment, pilgrims can be accommodated at the barracks of the 14th Infantry Regiment in exchange for a small donation to a worthy cause. The prospect was appealing, and briefly tempted me, but knowing military guys as I do, I predicted an endless evening of convivial company, vivid conversation, the possibility of adult beverages, and practically no sleep. Hence prioritising the mission, as all good strategists, armchair and otherwise, ought to do, I reluctantly set aside that beguiling option and repaired to the only other non-commercial alternative, the Pousada de Juventude on the east side of town.
Here I met with my first surprise. The youth hostel (EUR 14 a night; open until midnight; games annexe that closes at 18:00) is not only a logical starting point for the pilgrim route, but a yellow arrow is visibly painted on the pavement outside. Yet the nice woman behind the desk, when I asked her to frank my credencial, expressed puzzlement at the request and told me that the hostel didn't possess a rubber stamp. She'd never been asked, she said, for such a thing in the past. In conversation with other people around town, I was to find that this ignorance was general. Both the cathedral and the tourist office having closed before my 'bus arrived in town, and not being willing to hang around until 10:00 tomorrow when they reopened, I made my way to the central police station about ten minutes' walk away and explained my predicament to the officers at the door. They too had never heard of the pilgrimage route or the practice of stamping credencials, but they grasped the concept quickly enough. When they re-emerged from the office, my booklet bore the imprint of the Escuadra de Trânsito of the Comando da Polícia de Segurança Publíca to prove that I had indeed been in Viseu.
All well and good, and I was and am very grateful to them. But I couldn't help noticing that other than the distance-marker in the cathedral square, and the yellow arrows proceeding therefrom, there's nothing I can see in this city to indicate any connection with, or awareness of, the Caminho de Santiago. Everyone with whom I spoke, from waitresses to shopkeepers, disclaimed any knowledge of it. Nor was the usual gimcrack rubbish on sale in even the smallest northern Spanish towns—arrow-emblazoned T-shirts, scallop-shell refrigerator magnets et hoc genus omne—anywhere in evidence.
We'll see how things go. But it's starting to become clear that I shouldn't expect a great deal of hand-holding on this particular trip.
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