After a week in Spain, my backwater path from Arles and northeastern Spain joins the famed route from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and it’s like coming off a country road onto the interstate. The flow of pilgrims coming down from southwestern France is probably fifty times the number of pilgrims coming from the east. The nightly life in the auberges now settles into a predictable rhythm.
Every night the last, straggler pilgrims check in. Some of the latecomers have covered forty, fifty, sixty kilometers during the day. These are the hardcore who move easily through the stony hills and the afternoon heat because they’ve been at it for weeks, months in some cases. They’ve started from cathedrals and doorsteps near Munich and Paris and Rome. I can see the mileage in their cheekbones and rawhide tans. At dinner I overhear them tell each other over cigarettes they are turning around in Santiago and walking all the way home again.
The hard core arrive after the others because they use the entire spa…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to 100 Stories by Adam Nathan to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.