Buen Camino! - a  Philatelic Camino de Santiago 

Will I make it to the end? 

That was the question that kept popping up in my mind for quite a number of years. I knew for sure  I would try it sometime, but now that finally, after years, decades, of waiting, I was all set up and ready to go, I was infested with doubt. After all, age (and with it, health) is not only experience, and one's physical ability tends to decrease in time, not the other way round.

On the other hand, I was quite confident. I felt prepared. I had been training for it, for some time. in recent years, especially during the pandemic period, I took to the habit of walking daily a number of kilometres and I had done long stretches without feeling overwhelmed by it... but then there was the weight of the backpack... so I did a few walks fully laden just to see how hard it would be and these too did not prove insurmountable, so prospects looked not that bad.

Walking the Camino de Santiago on one of its many declinations is, as I see it, much more than a religious experience, something that for me means absolutely nothing, since I'm a hard-line agnostic. in fact, I was told that statistics show that religion motivates but 40% of the total of hikers that take the path to the magnificent cathedral that lies at its end. 

The routes of the apostle are probably some of the most celebrated and sought after walking destinations in Europe and I am sure there are as many reasons for doing it as  the number of persons that increasingly take to one of them to complete it.

I wanted to do it alone. For a number of reasons. I don't deny there is a spiritual dimension involved here, since when walking alone one is prone to reflection and contemplation, two things I do often indulge in, but first and foremost, walking in a group, and especially larger groups can be very distracting and even tiring. I like to hear the world, when I walk, and not what others are talking about. I rather listen to the bees, birds, the wind on the foliage, the streaming of water... I find the voice of nature a perfect polyphonic soundtrack for one to match one's own pace to it. And then there's the question of rhythm. Every walker has it own, and keeping pace with others can be much more tiring than walking at your own pace and rhythm.

The decision was therefore taken to do it solo, on one of the easiest routes, I hear, and one of the latest to be certified (2022) although it has been acknowledged  for some years now; the Portuguese Coastal Way, in the variant that connects Portugal to Spain at  Caminha, in the mouth of the Minho river.

Memorable  events deserve... memories; ways to somehow keep them for the future  in something more physical than one's own ROM, volatile as it can be, as we all know... so I would never leave home without a little notebook to keep my journey's log, and which now is a much precious souvenir of the 13 days I spent walking. But I also saw the opportunity for creating an exclusive philatelic memento of the journey. With this in mind, I decided I would send each day home a cover from the place I would end the day's leg, collecting on each envelope the stamps that are also collected in the Pilgrim's credential to later certify the effective completion of the journey, and thus obtain the Compostela, the official certificate of pilgrimage.

So I scrounged the internet looking for graphic elements to compose a nice envelope which I then printed in multiple copies (not as many as I would like, for any gram counted....), and once on the way,  posting the cover was the fifth (sometimes forth) most important step of my daily routine, after lodging; showering; washing my clothes and eating.

To improve diversity, I tried to obtain different stamps for each cover, and not only was I successful in this endeavor, but I could also find a stamp, albeit self-adhesive, dedicated to the Way of Saint James, which I used on my last cover, as a perfect epilogue to it all.

I was absolutely elated to realise upon my return that all the covers made it home, so I couldn't help but sharing them here on my humble blog:

Maybe they'll inspire someone to follow my footsteps on the Camino... who knows....? If so, let me wish him/her the traditional wish exchanged between those walking the way: Buen Camino!

Cover n. 1 - Posted on the 9th September, for the leg Porto (Porto's Cathedral) - Labruge.

I started the journey on a Saturday, with the post office closed, so I had to put the cover in pillar box at Labruge, hence the mechanical obliteration. The stamp was issued on 27MAY2023 and celebrates the 100 years of the Portuguese National Scouts Corps.

Cover n. 2 - Posted on the 10th September, for the leg Labruge - Póvoa do Varzim.

Same here. A Sunday, and I remember walking an extra 6 km, looking for the post office to drop the letter into the mailbox. The stamp, issued on 12JAN2022, is part of a four stamp set honouring Portuguese personalities who have played important roles in the United Nations Organization, in the case at hand, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, who was UN's General Assembley President for its 50th session, in 1995-1996.

Cover n. 3 - Posted on the 11th September, for the leg Póvoa do Varzim - Esposende.

A week day, so I was able to go for the first time to the post office and actually ask for a hand cancellation, as can be seen on the stamp, part of a set issued on 31MAR2022, devoted to contemporary Portuguese historic and cultural figures. The stamp honours architect Nuno Teotónio Pereira.

Cover n. 4 - Posted on the 12th September, for the leg Esposende - Viana do Castelo.

Again a nice hand applied postmark. The stamp is part of a set celebrating the 175 years of the creation by Queen Maria II in 1846 of the Grémio Literário, an institution devoted to literature and arts, issued on 21APR2022.

Cover n. 5 - Posted on the 13th September, for the leg Viana do Castelo - Caminha,

Another stamp of the set issued on  31MAR2022, devoted to contemporary Portuguese historic and cultural figures, honouring Maria de Lourdes Levy, the second woman to get a PhD in Medicine in

Portugal and an internationally acknowledged epilepsy specialist. 

Cover n. 6 - Posted on the 14th September, for the leg  Caminha - Porto Mougás.

A Guarda, the first town I touched in Spanish Soil, had a post office, and the two ladies there were very friendly in trying to answer my request for 10 different stamps for Europe, which they managed to produce, even if a couple of them were the  self-adhesive type. The post office also had a nice pictorial postmark, which I asked to be stamped on my cover, even if I was not posting it from there.

This was first cover I posted in Spain, and one of the two covers I could not post on the day of the leg, since Porto Mougás is a tiny place without post office or letter box, and on top of it, I stayed at a place some 2,5 km from the main road, up a steep hill. So, even if there was a letter box on the main road below, I don't think I would have the stamina to go down and up hill again just to post the letter. So I just had it cancelled in the first Post Office I found on the way next day, that of the nice town of Baiona.

For my first Spanish cover, I felt it appropriate to use this year's EUROPA issue that began to circulate on Europe's day, 09MAY2023.

Cover n. 7 - Posted on the 15th September, for the leg  Porto Mougás - Sabaris.

Sabaris has no post office too, since it is just a couple of km away from Baiona.  So I just dropped the letter into the pillar box there, using a  stamp issued on 24APR2023, dedicated to the April's Feria of Sevilla, illustrated with the Feria portico.

Cover n. 8 - Posted on the 16th September, for the leg Sabaris - Vigo

A Saturday again, so I dropped the letter into the pillar box I found close to the place I was staying at, in Vigo.

The stamp used was issued on 22JUN2023, as part of a 4 stamp set dedicated to Spanish Museums. It features the Hall of the Basque country Contemporary Art Museum at  Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Cover n. 9 - Posted on the 18th September, for the leg  Vigo - Ramallosa

Ramallosa hid an unpleasant surprise.  Since it was Sunday, I went looking for the Post office hoping to find a letter box there to drop my day cover. I did find the Post Office but strangely there was no letter box or a pillar box in view to drop any letters, I find it completely odd, but in fact I did not find any place to drop the letter off, so I took it with me and had it posted the next day at the Post Office at Arcade, a town I passed along the way. If one looks closely, the postmark from Arcade (rather poorly applied, still has the date of the Friday before, the 15th)

The stamp used was issued on 19APR2023, and it features a detail of the 2005 mural painting by Spanish muralist Jorge Gay (Zaragoza, Aragon, 1950), called El Amor Nuevo (the New Love), which can be seen at the Foundation of the Teruel Lovers, in Teruel.

Cover n. 10 - Posted on the 18th September, for the leg Ramallosa - Pontevedra.

At Pontevedra I finally managed to cancel the stamp with a nice pictorial postmark, with a line view of the City's Cathedral.

I was running out of stamps so I used a self-adhesive stamp issued on 05NOV2021 as part of the two stamp Christmas issue for the year, illustrated with a photo of the monumental nativity scene of the Army, at Burgos, which  celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2022.

Cover n. 11 - Posted on the 19h September, for the leg Pontevedra - Caldas de Reis

The stamps used were sometimes rather large, so I had to glue this one sideways to ensure I would not block off any of the nice stamps I had collected. Themed on Archeology, the stamp was issued on 16JUN2023 and features pictures of mosaics at the Salar Roman Villa, in Granada. 

Cover n. 12 - Posted on the 20th September, for the leg Caldas de Reis - Padrón (Iria Flavia)

At Padrón I was counting on getting a nice pictorial stampmark of the Camino, since I had seen them mentioned on Correos website, but unfortunately I was informed at the Post Office that they were no longer available, so the cover was cancelled with the standard day mark, and afterwards with a mechanical postmark too...

Another stamp of the 2023 museums issue, which began to circulate on 22JUN2023, featuring a photo of the Real Academia de Belas Artes de San Fernando, (Royal Arts Academy of San Fernando) in  Madrid.

Cover n. 13 - Posted on the 21st September, for the final leg, Padrón (iria Flavia) - Santiago de Compostela

The last cover, for which I had saved a self-adhesive stamp dedicated to the Camino de Santiago, issued on 25APR2016, was graced with the nice pictorial cancellation of Santiago de Compostela Post Office, featuring the image of the Cathedral and the stamp of the Cathedral itself, among others.

I had made it after all. and I could not be happier.

Upon entering the Obradoiro square, right in front the cathedral, I finally laid my backpack down, savoured the moment,  asked someone there to please take my mandatory picture with my cellphone and sent the following message to my friends:

That's it... I made it! More than 300 km, 13 days, alone, but for the music of the air and  the rhythm of my boots as they fused with earth, mud, water, sand, grass, dead leaves, living leaves, asphalt...

I look for no other indulgence than the solitary pleasure of walking and sucking up the world around me with my eyes wide open and that grace was fully conceded to me. And with that, I couldn't be happier!