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Fifty posts and countless suggestions later..
With that in mind, why not just sleep in the place you've already booked and take it as you find it? Meantime you can put it out of your mind until you arrive there. Trust it will all be fine, and it will.🙂
Of course there is..
Generally, if the pilgrim is honest and straight up, as most are.. they are treated with respect and compassion. If they are a blatant liar and taking the piss, they are likely to be treated less favourably, as in all walks of life! But as a new volunteer, you'd be guided...
Yes, I remember wading through cattle several times on that route in particular..
As with all animals, a soothing voice in whatever language. Pass gently without sudden movements, dont flail about the place and never pass between a mother and calf.
It isn't openly on display and it's rarely asked for. But it's sometimes offered as a consolation prize to someone who doesn't qualify for a compostela. A pretty certificate in it's own right!
Your duties as a volunteer will be the welcoming of pilgrims and giving them their compostela, as before. Even with much of the process automated, it is still a personal service.. it's a nice place to volunteer! I will be there myself in early October.
A new pair of shoes will get you across Spain. For the sake of simplicity, would you not just get a new pair of your Hoka things, whatever they are.. now, before you go, and just walk to Santiago in them?
Oh, I don't! When a decidedly unfit looking man's credencial shows he's cycled 500 km from Burgos in three days, and when asked in a friendly way if he did it on a bicicleta electrica and he insists indignantly 'No, solo bicicleta normal',
Then I see him and his friends outside on the street...
It probably wouldn't make a great deal of difference anyway if the PO changed the distance requirement for e-bikes. Plenty of big fat, middle aged men claim compostelas, supposedly having cycled all the way to SdC under their own steam, fooling nobody but themselves. Same goes for bus tourists...
I don't know the answers to your questions, but I do know I've had days like these.. tiring days, boring days that I question what I'm doing here at all. I'm always glad of my own bed at the end of a camino, but still, the longing comes back. Nothing will ever compare to the magic of that first...
Nice article, thanks!
€700 for a pair of shoes sounds outrageous, but I can certainly appreciate all the work that goes into them. They have well heeled customers, too!
It would indeed be helpful, but for me at least, life's just too short and it's all too confusing..
I'm very lucky.. I can drop everything, jump on a plane and go walking across Spain for a month at short notice. When I run out of cash, I can go to a hole in the wall, get another clump of...
I agree with what he writes: there is too much (media driven) focus on planning, logistics and physical fitness and not enough on mental attitude and preparedness for an inner journey. At the risk of offending some, it seems to me, this very forum represents pretty well this 80/20 rule thing...
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