ASK AINE
Dear Aine,
I have a decision to make, but I cannot do it without help. I am going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Northwestern Spain. Should I go by land or by sea?
Dear Without Direction,
The route that you take depends on what you want of the journey. If time is of the essence, then the sea voyage is the answer. According to Maxine Feifer in Tourism in History and Giovanni Caselli in The Middle Ages, the journey is a mere three weeks round trip. A four day journey takes you from Plymouth, Falmouth, South Hampton, Bristol, or many other English ports directly to La Coruna in Spain. Then it is just a few hours walk to Compostella and the shrine and tomb of St James the Apostle. But since there are no luxury passenger liners, you will have to travel by cargo boat. Sailing season is usually mid-March until mid-November and schedules are imprecise and subject to tides, favorable winds, and storms. Please bring your own food, wine, cookware, servants, bedding, and tents.
If you have the time and want a more interesting trip, then the overland route is for you. The journey is usually about three months one way. But there is wonderful sight-seeing and shopping, both sacred and secular, along the way.
First stop is Reading Abbey, with its splinters from Aaron's Rod, chips from the Rock of Moses, fragments of the True Cross, Robes of St. Thomas and Mary, St. Luke's Tooth, St. James' hand, and the Shoe, Blood, and Foreskin of Jesus. Then comes a short trip across the channel to Calais to meet other pilgrims in order to form a travel group. It is a three day walk to Amiens Cathedral, which displays the skull of John the Baptist. (His skull is also at St. Jean d'Angely near Orleans but they explain that this skull is from when he was a young man.) Next on the itinerary is St. Chapelle in Paris which has reliquaries holding bits of Sponge, Reed, and Cloak from Christ's walk to Calvary, the Crown of Thorns, Breast Milk and Hair from the Virgin Mary, and more fragments of the True Cross. Also at Orleans are more pieces of the True Cross. This is just a short catalog of all the shrines leading to your goal.
The secular sites are also worth the trip. If your spouse does not come with you, a "special friend" could also just happen to go on pilgrimage at the same time. You can be entertained along the way by the stories of a myriad of fellow travellers, by sing-alongs, and by jounglers and musicians. Pilgrims will meet an assortment of professionals selling indulgences, holy souvenirs, worldly goods, pitiful hardluck stories, and their bodies. Certainly there are poor and ill equipped inns and hospices along the way, but that will be forgotten after stays at such luxury hospices as Roncesvaux at the foot of the Pyrenees in Spain. You should come back with wonderful memories and a large collection of badges (particularly cockle shells, the emblem of St. James).
Like Aine du Bayonne sur l'Adour in the 12th Century, Jane Anne Carey has shopped her way across a continent and hopes to do it again.
Return to Home - Relative When