new to the forum

[alain]

We are new to the forum.
We walked the camino frances from Leon to Santiago in july/august2006 averaging 25km daily. We then took a bus to finisterre - a lot of that area was burning (vandals). We had the usual pilgrims physical pains. Our first day from Leon to Villar de mazarife was rough as we started late (about 9.30am, after mailing to santiago our excess clothes) and it was quite hot. It got better after that, as we started walking early, usually at 6am. Walking the camino was a really wonderful experience, especially meeting with so many pilgrims from all over the world.
We flew from Toronto to Madrid and took a train to Leon where we spent our first night.
We were fortunate to have a german shepherd dog walking side by side with us for part of the way up to O'cebreiro. At one point, where the trail split we walked to the right instead of going left (we did not see the arrow)- fortunately the dog was waiting for us and we got back on the correct trail.

We are hoping to volunteer as hospitaleros , for a couple of weeks, at rabanal del camino refugio Gaucelmo some time in the near future.
We would like to hear from anybody with experience as hospitaleros.

alain & janet

 

[brendan nolan]

Hi Alain and Janet,
Welcome to the Forum. I'm a member of the Confraternity of St. James in England and worked as hospitalero this year at Refugio Gaucelmo, Rabanal.
It's really great to know of people like yourselves who want to put something back into the Pilgrimage. As pilgrim and hospitalero I've met great people from Canada.
Regarding the work as hospitalero - it's hard but very rewarding work; in the last two weeks of May we welcomed 475 pilgrims from 29 countries.
So to get to what you want - who to contact. The CSJ Hospitalero Co-ordinator is Tricia Shaw, and I might as well give you her E-mail address rather than send you through the CSJ site.
stuartandtricia@btinternet.com
If you have any problems contacting Tricia please get back to me, but meanwhile all the best in your venture. Perhaps you will be pleased to know that the normal practice of the CSJ is to put, as far as is possible, new hospitaleros with others who are experienced so you are not dropped in at the deep end! Also if you want to ask questions please get in touch - but maybe the private message might be better for this sort of topic. Will be interested to hear how you get on.
Best wishes,
Brendan

 

[alain]

HI Brendan

Thanks for the email for Tricia, we'll email her. We're glad to hear about "not being thrown in the deep end". We spoke to somebody who volonteered as hopitalero and he said that it is not important to know spanish as we are fluent in english and french. However we are learning spanish as we want to be able to communicate with spanish speaking pilgrims.
thanks again

alain & janet

 

[lillypond]

opps........ meant to post this elsewhere..... lo siente

This was a spanish language question which I meant to post elsewhere