- Time of past OR future Camino
- Many
Hello pilgrims!
I have been working on a small side project to the usual wintertime camino guide app updates and it is finally on the app store shelves (though only for iOS, sorry android users).
As some of you may know I spend a lot of time on the camino, more so now that I live next to the Finisterre route and am helping to rebuild a farmhouse on the Francés. This past summer I found myself talking to a lot of pilgrims about being lost on the camino. Not the metaphoric lost we all experience at one point, but the real lost. It happened that one afternoon I caught out of the corner of my eye a pair of pilgrims turning the corner at the bottom of a hill that I knew they should NOT be heading down. I chased them down before they could get too far. They got distracted taking pictures of cows they said.
At the end of the day it became the dinner conversation, and for me I kept asking everyone I met. The number of lost-at-some-point pilgrims surprised me.
I want to point out that there wasn’t a single terrified response, in case there are any soon to be pilgrims reading this. Nobody really gets lost on the camino, they only temporarily lose their way and have to walk back. But at some point or another most people had at least once found themselves a bit too far from the yellow arrows… and of them most were waved back to the camino by someone nearby.
The answers to the ‘lost’ question got me thinking about what could be done to improve the yellow arrows. I haven’t figured out an answer to that question (and don’t know that it is mine to solve) but as part of my side project I have endeavored to answer the question of where the arrows needed to be improved.
I have created a very simple app that does one thing and one thing only, it tells you if you are on the camino. Or off the camino. Then it records your location, and at the end of your camino you are encouraged to submit them via email from within the app.
My hope is that enough pilgrims will use it and the data collected can paint a better picture of where arrows and signage needs to be improved. Once pilgrims begin sending in their “points of confusion” as I like to call them, I will begin plotting them on a map for the public to see. With enough of them I will contact the various Amigo groups to share the findings.
Of course the app is free and always will be. This first version is still experimental but stable, and in the very near future the accuracy will be improved to encompass the entirety of the Camino Francés’ various detours. If it is well received, it is a trivial effort to create the same app for the other caminos.
With a bit of luck, perhaps no more pilgrims will ever visit Sabugos by accident… nor have to climb back up to the camino when they do.
Thanks and Buen Camino!
Michael
Here is the link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1078270702
I have been working on a small side project to the usual wintertime camino guide app updates and it is finally on the app store shelves (though only for iOS, sorry android users).
As some of you may know I spend a lot of time on the camino, more so now that I live next to the Finisterre route and am helping to rebuild a farmhouse on the Francés. This past summer I found myself talking to a lot of pilgrims about being lost on the camino. Not the metaphoric lost we all experience at one point, but the real lost. It happened that one afternoon I caught out of the corner of my eye a pair of pilgrims turning the corner at the bottom of a hill that I knew they should NOT be heading down. I chased them down before they could get too far. They got distracted taking pictures of cows they said.
At the end of the day it became the dinner conversation, and for me I kept asking everyone I met. The number of lost-at-some-point pilgrims surprised me.
I want to point out that there wasn’t a single terrified response, in case there are any soon to be pilgrims reading this. Nobody really gets lost on the camino, they only temporarily lose their way and have to walk back. But at some point or another most people had at least once found themselves a bit too far from the yellow arrows… and of them most were waved back to the camino by someone nearby.
The answers to the ‘lost’ question got me thinking about what could be done to improve the yellow arrows. I haven’t figured out an answer to that question (and don’t know that it is mine to solve) but as part of my side project I have endeavored to answer the question of where the arrows needed to be improved.
I have created a very simple app that does one thing and one thing only, it tells you if you are on the camino. Or off the camino. Then it records your location, and at the end of your camino you are encouraged to submit them via email from within the app.
My hope is that enough pilgrims will use it and the data collected can paint a better picture of where arrows and signage needs to be improved. Once pilgrims begin sending in their “points of confusion” as I like to call them, I will begin plotting them on a map for the public to see. With enough of them I will contact the various Amigo groups to share the findings.
Of course the app is free and always will be. This first version is still experimental but stable, and in the very near future the accuracy will be improved to encompass the entirety of the Camino Francés’ various detours. If it is well received, it is a trivial effort to create the same app for the other caminos.
With a bit of luck, perhaps no more pilgrims will ever visit Sabugos by accident… nor have to climb back up to the camino when they do.
Thanks and Buen Camino!
Michael
Here is the link:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1078270702
