Buen Camino! - a  Philatelic Camino de Santiago 

Part II - the postcards

I should have sent one from Porto, also. 

This was my thought when I looked at the two postcards I have on my table as I type. In fact my journey began in the beautiful northern city caressed by the ceaseless flow of the Douro on its way to succumb into the Atlantic, much to the indifference of the city's hustle and bustle, for this has held true for thousands of years, and will hold true for many a thousand more... 

Why didn't I? I had the time and the opportunity…, but you can't go back in time, so I ended up sending but two postcards for me. One posted from the last town I touched before entering Spain and the other from the finish line, the magnificent cathedral that has witnessed thousands and thousands of people driven by faith or by will or by both come to its door from all Europe, from places as far as Poland or the Scandinavian Peninsula, or the Eastern Mediterranean coast.

The postcard I sent from Caminha though, has much more than a stamp and a postmark associated to it.

It is the reminder of a meeting. Not a chance meeting with fellow walkers or locals, like the many I had along the way, but a pre-arranged and, for me at least, highly anticipated one.

This blog has made it possible to exchange covers with a lot of people. From that group of friendly people who happen to share a common interest with me, a few have become more frequent on the "return to address, if undelivered" flap of the envelopes I so eagerly antecipate.

From this smaller group, an even smaller number has been kind enough to let me maintain some direct contact with them by email or a messaging app.

But, up to now, I had never met anyone face to face, I had never been able to put a face to the names I so often write and thank for another great addition to my growing collection.

That's why when I got a note from one of these kind souls saying he'd be probably able to meet me to walk a bit of a day's leg of my journey, I felt quite happy and immediately accepted his proposal, even though one of the main objectives of my journey was to be ... well.. alone, for a while, fully committed to my thoughts and perceptions. Still, my experience told me that meeting people with whom we have some common grounds, with whom we share some interests, is always much easier and productive than what my inherent shyness always makes me fear.

And this again proved true, for when I entered Praça da República at Vila Praia de Âncora and saw this bloke looking down the street  searching for someone with a backpack, I immediately knew we would get along well, and in fact the first few words we exchanged were the kind  that are exchanged between people who have known each other for some time: "Hi, there you are, so how is it going" "Fine, thanks" and without further ado we proceeded to a table on the patio of "Café Central" so that I could finally have a much  desired "bica" (what an expresso is called in the south of Portugal, for in Porto the same thing goes by the name of Cimbalino. Just don't worry, ask for a café, and everyone will know what you want, irrespective of geography).

Eric, for it is him who I'm talking about, was my gift for the day.  We had an enjoyable conversation, in Portuguese, for Eric speaks it as well as I do,  with no need for ice-breakers or weighing our own words,  from the very first expresso sips… But the earth was moving and so was the day and Caminha was still some 10 km away, so I got up to put my back pack on... but no way. Eric simply would not let me: "Let me take it for you, for a while".... I was flabbergasted .. "No, how come... it is heavy, you shouldn't..", but while I was still uttering my concerns, he was already adjusting the back pack belt to his waist....

And I, shamelessly, have to confess that not only did not insist (he was so determined...) but also deep at heart I felt a bit relieved because that was the longest leg of the entire journey (in excess of 30 km) and after 20, every gram in the back pack starts to inflate as by some strange physical phenomenon, so much so, that I believe I have discovered a new law of physics which will go down in history as the Eric and Pedro's axiom: after 20 km, every gram of matter increases in weight, in direct proportion to the distance travelled. ( I feel a Nobel coming in...).

So we took to the road that follows the coast and we spent a couple of delightful hours walking, talking and enjoying the magnificent views at our side, until, already close to the end of my leg, Eric had to turn back (to walk again almost 10 km to our point of departure).

“Take it, you must take it to the end of the leg”, said Eric, handing over the backpack to me.

We exchanged goodbyes, but a bond had been created...

And exchanged letters and postcards will now take more than stamps and postmarks with them, even if empty, or filled with just a plain unwritten card... 

I'm sure Eric agrees with me..

 

The main square at Caminha.... I had a great ice cold alcohol free beer on one of those cafe patios, while writing on my little logbook the notes for quite a special day,

The day's postmark of the Post office at Caminha on the stamp with an image of the castle of Miranda do  Douro, which stands some 300 km to the East, curiously also on the border with Spain . This stamp is part of a six N20 (Domestic up to 20g) stamps + 1 3,00€ (make some money for the company...) stamp souvenir sheet, issued on 10MAR2023, themed on castles and fortresses on the raia (the border with Spain).

It took me eight days from that day, Ito again send  another postcard home. 

Feelings invoked by the image of the cathedral on this postcard were now  much more mixed, though, for arriving was somewhat anticlimactic:

The journey had ended, period!

I was happy that I had conquered m Everest, I had attained my objective, but, somehow, I was a little sad that something that I had wanted for so long had just been completed... terminated.... achieved...

Still I'm sure other ways will be opened to my steps, to my waking poles....,yes, that's what the image of the cathedral reminds me of....that's what the image of the cathedral keeps telling me to do... so I'd better keep that postcard well at hand....

Santiago's Cathedral by night... even the moon walks to its courtyard, it seems.....

The stamp themed on Archeology,  issued on 16JUN2023, featuring the mosaics at the Salar Roman Villa, in Granada. 

Sadly, the beautiful pictorial Postmark of Santiago Central Post Office, with a image of the Catedral, is obliterated by a mechanical postmark, presumably pertaining to the Mail Prossessing Station at Santiago.

 

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!