Let's Go Home

For forty eight days our rallying call was "Let's go home."  Several times a day - when starting our walk in the morning, when getting up from a cafe, even when we could barely think of taking another step in the all-encompassing heat and had momentarily collapsed under the shade of a fence post in the mesetas - "Let's go home" was the call we adopted to restart our trek.  

Even in the weeks after the Camino was finished, we would affectionately refer to our current hotel as "home".  

Today we are finally going home.  I'm on a plane from Barcelona to Frankfurt as I write this, and at  7:16 Eastern time tonight, the big black KIA belonging to my friend Mike will pull up to the doors of the Ottawa airport, he'll say "welcome to Canada" we'll stumble inside (17 hours of traveling time today) and after about 40 minutes he will deliver us to 537 Main Street.  Home!  After 93 days with a series of adventures, "Let's go home" will be a reality.

But what a series of adventures it has been.

- three nights, four days in Paris.

- two days getting to and enjoying Saint Jean Pied de Port, the beginning of the Camino de Santiago.

- 48 days walking the 800 km from SJPDP to Santiago de Compestela (SdC). Many people do it in about 30 days, some in far less.  (I met one man whose first Camino was 14 days. Ours was 48.)

- one week hanging around SdC and Finnisterre, the end of the world, greeting pilgrims, making friends.

 

- one magical week of pure vacation in Porto, Portugal.  The weather was an unseasonable 32C every afternoon and it was wonderful.

- the best part of another week walking the 90 km from SdC to Muxia on the Atlantic coast.  The part of the Atlantic Coast where Finnisterre and Muxia are located is referred to as "the Costa del Mort" or the "Coast of Death" because of the many shipwrecks in its treacherous waters.

 

- back in SdC for a week of partial study and partial renewing acquaintances with pilgrim types.

 

- a week in and near Barcelona, enjoying the Mediterranean Sea, and in particular the Costa Bravo with Camino friends Xavi and Carmen.  What wonderful hosts they were, allowing us to see a part of Spain that we would have missed entirely if left to our own devices.

 

Every one of those things was an adventure in itself. Some of them would have to be called "Adventures within Adventures!" 

But there's one adventure I haven't talked about very much in this series of blogs.  And that is tonight, at 7:16 pm we go home!  Winchester, ON, the life and ministry of the adventure we have called home for 20 years.  

Buen Camino, friends. Buen Camino.