- Time of past OR future Camino
- Too many and too often!
While walking the Via de la Plata recently a friend asked me if the Portico de la Gloria is open to the public again. Sadly I think it's only accessible as part of a group tour. It used to be a very moving experience to arrive in the Obradoiro square at the end of your Camino, walk up the steps, through the "modern" Gothic/Baroque facade and then discover the Romanesque Portico. Pausing to put your hand on the Tree of Jesse pillar in the marks worn by many thousands of pilgrims over the centuries. Nod to Master Mateo on the inside face of the pillar. Then walk straight up the central aisle towards the high altar. With your rucksack still on your back. No longer possible and unfortunately entering the cathedral by a side door lacks the dramatic effect!
I'm staying with family in London today and I remembered that there is a full-size plaster cast of the Portico in the V&A museum. An enormous piece of very detailed work. So I went to see it again after many years. I then walked to Trafalgar Square. The Camino connection? On the corner of Trafalgar Square where Northumberland Avenue meets Whitehall there is a Tesco Express and Pret a Manger. But for several hundred years pre-Reformation that was the site of St Mary Rounceval. A pilgrim hospital and a daughter house of the great monastery at Roncesvalles. It was the religious house for which Chaucer's Pardoner sold his indulgences. So in the space of a couple of hours I walked from the Portico to Roncesvalles (sort of...)
I'm staying with family in London today and I remembered that there is a full-size plaster cast of the Portico in the V&A museum. An enormous piece of very detailed work. So I went to see it again after many years. I then walked to Trafalgar Square. The Camino connection? On the corner of Trafalgar Square where Northumberland Avenue meets Whitehall there is a Tesco Express and Pret a Manger. But for several hundred years pre-Reformation that was the site of St Mary Rounceval. A pilgrim hospital and a daughter house of the great monastery at Roncesvalles. It was the religious house for which Chaucer's Pardoner sold his indulgences. So in the space of a couple of hours I walked from the Portico to Roncesvalles (sort of...)
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