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Is there a difference for you emotionally/intellectually, i.e. does the fact that this is the Camino, that has been walked by so many before, have a big impact on you that is absent in other long distance walks?
sillydoll said:None of these felt like pilgrimage trails somehow.
[...]
In spite of the Turonensis, the VF and the Camino Ingles being ancient paths that have been walked by many before us, and although one experiences the same magic of long distance walking, none of them had the same mystique, the same pull or the same vibrancy as the Camino Frances.
.So I am afraid that the Camino Frances would be like a brass band in a huge cave, with every experience jumbled up with every other and indistinguishable, compared to the chamber orchestra in a perfect acoustic where each individual sound is identifiable and meaningful
Finding traces of pilgrims from the past is certainly not confined to the Camino Frances, or even Spain
sillydoll said:Thousands of pilgrims have had very meaningful experiences walking the camino frances - some life altering - hence its popularity and the reason why so many walk it again and again.
sillydoll said:Of course, you are right, there are thousands of Christian shrines all over Europe - many pilgrimage destinations in their own right.
sillydoll said:However, I think there is a reason why the camino frances was named Europe's first Cultural Itinerary by the European Union. It is a bit like an 800km outdoor museum with its many well documented monuments, churches, abbeys, cathedrals and little jewels of medieval villages, Roman bridges and roads, straw and mud structures etc etc.
The landscape too is a great attraction, from the forests of the Pyrenees, through undulating woodland, the vineyards of Navarra and La Rioja, the wide open plains of the meseta to the mountains of León which take you up to 1,400 metres over 2 days, then very steeply down to the Bierzo plain, then up again to the Cebreiro range reaching 1,400 metres and the highest point in the Irago Mountains at 1500m just after Manjarin, into the green, undultaing farmlands of Galicia.
sillydoll said:What I was trying to convey on my earlier post is that on the less supported routes I've walked in France, Switzerland and Italy - all on designated pilgrim trails but without the pilgrim infrastructure and often no other pilgrims- I felt like a tourist with a backpack on rather than a pilgrim and I've never had the urge to go back and walk those routes again.
sillydoll said:If your reservation about walking the Camino Frances is only that it will be crowded, then you should go at a quieter time, probably in October onwards, and probably after the Holy Year when you are more likely to have a solitary experience.
Bridget and Peter said:If and when we take the Camino Frances, on foot or on bikes, it will be early or late in the year.
"and avoiding detours up hills etc, which travellers of yore would never have done."
"The lonely hamlet and monastic hospital of Foncébadon, founded by the 10th century near the high pass of this latter range, is testimony that pilgrims did not shy away from accepting the challenge of this mountain route. A few archaeological indicators in less dramatic circumstances shed further light on pilgrim attitudes to terrain. Just outside Castrojeriz in the Meseta, the route of the Camino runs determinedly westward up a steep, uncompromising hill, and then descends on the other side (Figure 7). A detour of just a kilometre or two via another village presents no difficult slope to climb. Why is it that the route avoids the naturally more easy and efficient path through the landscape? Seemingly the challenges presented by the natural landscape were accepted with a mind-set of penitence, one that dictated that spiritual merit was won by the hardship of the journey. This would fit in well with the overall penitential theme of the practice of pilgrimage.
Indeed - but if just that one point is false, which it is, I already have no interest in reading the rest of it ....
As you will know, most 'evidence' for a thesis or dissertation is not from first hand knowledge but from reading what others have written before,
Peter Robins said:As someone who's walked large numbers of LDPs (map at http://www.peterrobins.co.uk/walking/mywalks.html ), I think there are several different questions here, which boil down to the questions of motivation and objectives.
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