hang on a minute!

David, When I was in grade school my fifth grade history teacher was old...really old...older than dirt. She was always speaking of how powerful the Roman Empire was. I figured I could trust her because she was there and traveled those roads.

David said:

Hang on a minute!
- it just occurred to me that as a child I was taught again and again that "all roads lead to Rome" - so how is it that we always end up in Santiago?

Are the maps wrong? Or were my teachers lying to me?

Click to expand...

Not always, David. There are some of us who have found other places to journey to on our pilgrimages. I note that recently @JohnnieWalker chose quite a different pilgrimage to undertake in Japan, and some of us have taken other roads than those to Rome and Santiago. Or perhaps we are lost souls and lack the essential sense of direction to always make it to Santiago.

It's the little yellow arrows David blame Johnny Walker. He never takes his brush and yellow paint when he walks to the other places. only when he's on the Camino to Santiago. Simples

Curious, I was taught "Omnia ab Roma". Everything comes from Rome. Which made no sense in the context of the Ridgeway, or the Peddars Way or any of that stuff that was here in my homeland before the cute guys in the armour and skirts started building bungalows and installing central heating so I decided it was one of those grown up jokes that I wasn't supposed to get.
The route of the stars, the route to the west, to the end of the world, that was ours too. Though the guys in the skirts with the nasty sharp pointy swords, well they bagged that too. Then came the second wave. Conquering the world in a soft, turny cheeked, smiley way. And they nicked the old roads too.
In poor old Nottingham the poor and the damned still gather at "the Trip" no longer bound for Jerusalem or the sack of Constantinople but still well up for some pillage if it's there.

The road leads where it leads. If Yeates was right it only ever leads us home. Surely it's the journey that matters.

Well I was always taught the expression "You can't know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes". On the Camino I got to know quite a few people without ever walking a mile in their shoes, and frankly when they took them off I was glad I hadn't, thank you very much.

The "shoes" thing is a mediphor for understanding someone's situation, smelly feet aside...not a good thing.
Now if you would say, "walk a mile with someone else's pack" something may indeed be learned about that person. Just make sure they know you're trying to find out about them...not taking their pack