Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

[Acuario]

Day 16: The end of the world...
We caught the bus at 9am to Finisterre - the weather unbelieveably is still holding although a few drops of rain had fallen overnight.

After we arrived we did walk to Faro and, what appears to be the graveyard of 100,000+ boots.. is it tradition to burn/leave your boots when you arrive?

It´s well woth the trip there after coming so far - it almost felt, yesterday, like we hadn´t really finished in Santiago - now we have..

Tomorrow we´re homeward bound via La Coruña to Barcelona and Tortosa respectively.

I´ll add some more thoughts to this posting when I get home, but I hope you have enjoyed reading up to now.

Nigel

[KiwiNomad06]

Congratulations Nigel! It has been great following your progress as you have walked. Enjoy the bus ride to Finisterre!
Margaret

[Rose Louise]

Nigel & Atancha

Thanks for the great posts of your walk. What will you do after the Camino? Enjoy the memories of the wonderful and sometimes painful experiences that have unfolded along the way for you.

Cheers Rose Louise

[jl]

Congratulations Nigel and Arancha on completing what you set out to do - especially with the problems of knees and health. I have really enjoyed reading your postings - they have brought back many memories. Thank you, Janet

[Acuario]

Me and arancha on the Camino..

[sillydoll]

Great picture - were you using two mats or were you being kind and carrying Arancha's mat for her?

[Acuario]

Well there's a story to this.. isn't there always?

I read about the bedbugs and one of the pieces of advice was to put a mat between your sleeping bag and the bed, so we took mats.

I used mine the first 3 or 4 days, along with essential lavendar oil, but Arancha didn't use hers at all (at this stage we were carrying our own). In Rabanal del Camino she decided it was 'excess baggage' so wanted to abandon hers. I thought this was a bit excessive so carried it onwards. A few days later she remembered a friend of hers, who walked the camino about 6 years ago, had stayed in an Albergue without beds and had slept on the floor, so it was a good idea to carry on with them (I carried on carrying them I hasten to add!)

When we got to Sarria Arancha decided we really didn't need them and they really were 'excess luggage' and, as I hadn't used mine either, it was time to add them to the Albergues collection of abandoned mats.

So, there they stayed, in Sarria. So next time you stay in the Municipal Albergue in Sarria you may come across them.

Nigel

[sillydoll]

I recognize the albergue. We had a wonderful meal at Marcel's albergue (Vegetariano) in La Faba which consisted of fresh produce picked from the field opposite the albergue. Unfortunately his beds were all taken so we stayed at the German albergue although he did offer us the Teepee in the field!