We had to catch a bus yesterday. The photo above shows Ed waiting at the stop. A sliver of the Atlantic ocean –actually, the Bay of Biscay– can be seen in the distance. The man who walked by was a local farmer (retired) using a staff.

After starting with a heavy downpour, the day turned partly sunny and very humid. While southern Spain has suffered from huge rains and floods, our northern slice has been blessed with good weather. There are still a stunning variety of wildflowers and only a few traces of autumn, seen in the bountiful apples, pumpkins and tomatoes we pass on the road.

A long and steep climb was rewarded with a visit to one of the oldest churches on the Camino. In San Salvador at the top of the hill in tiny La Priesca, 9th century frescoes can still be seen. The colors and shapes are faded but lovely. It’s amazing that they have survived more than 1,000 years, despite the local humidity!

Today, September 17, we walked to La Isla. Most of the walk was near to the sea and on paths – not on pavement. We have walked for 6 days, about 90 Km, and taken trains or bus or taxi about 45 Km. 

We spent our first rest day in Ribadesella yesterday and met our Camino friends Julio and Luz there for dinner. What a great coincidence that they were having a short vacation from their home in Madrid and were in Ribadesella when we arrived. We are looking forward to seeing them again in Madrid in early October.

The paths from Santander has been over hilly terrain and our legs have been tired at the end of each day. After yesterday’s rest day we were in better shape today and our legs seems to be getting used to the daily distances.

Walking today in rural Asturias away from any highways was quiet. We heard the bells from cows and sheep as we passed the farms. We heard birds singing and water running in the streams as we passed. The waves from the Atlantic greeted when we were close to the ocean. It was a quiet, peaceful day. 

We think of Mary MacDonald every day as we walk. We are also thinking of all our family and friends. In the peaceful and quiet time we are enjoying we are able to say prayers for all, to remember each one of you, see your faces and think of the good times we have shared.

Life is good on the Camino. No distractions. No rain so far. No significant barro (mud) yet. Good weather.

We will be walking to Oviedo this week. That was a  very important place in the history of Spain.

Our friend, Rafa, who had given us so many wonderful suggestions for our journeys through Spain, urged us while in Comillas (end of Day 2) not to miss el Capricho de Gaudi. This residence, one of the artist’s early creations, was dubbed by the locals as Caprice of Gaudi because it seemed so fanciful and impractical.

Crowned with a minaret and covered with bright sunflowers, the house is a burst of color and curving lines. Inside, it is amazingly practical and comfortable, with innovations like double-hung windows whose counterweights play musical tones and interior shutters that roll into curved cases like sidewise roll top desks.

Tragically, the wealthy lawyer, Massimo, who commissioned the house, lived there only one week before succumbing to illness. Massimo was an “Indiano,” an to immigrant to Spain from the New World (probably Cuba). So here in Comillas we see a century and half old example of the persistence and creative benefits of human migration.

Gaudi loved and appreciated the beauty of Islamic culture and art and married Islamic elements with Western European to create loveliness and joy.

We have completed Day 3 of our Camino del Norte.Thanks to Ed’s excellent planning, we started out with an easy stage of 11 kms by taking a commuter train out of Santander to Requejada and then walking to Santillana del Mar, which is a lovely village that has been largely restored just within the last 20 years. Sadly, the wonderful 12th century church has not received needed attention. As we knelt in worship, an alarming amount of crumbling rock and mortar ground beneath our knees and seats. Gaping cracks were opened in the back wall.Among scores of ancient Camino churches where we have celebrated the Eucharist, this was in the worst condition.On Day 2 we wound our way up and down hills, near and far from the coast. That night we slept to the sound of the surf and woke to a band of dusky pink reflected from the sunrise into the western sky. Knowing that our needs will be provided, we started without our pilgrim symbols –the scallop shell signifying the Way of St James– and sure enough, found the very last two shells in a tiny shop tucked into the corner of the Santillana church.Notice the difference between this photo and the one at the top of this post. So we walk on, falling gradually into our pilgrim rhythm and listening to the quiet.

Greetings from Barcelona where it is raining, 51 degrees, and we have a four hour layover until flying onward to Santander to start walking tomorrow. Ed is standing in the photo in front of a sign which I playfully mistranslated as “Tower of Manliness,” holding a shopping bag from Mango Man.

Tomorrow, September 11, is Catalan National Day, but we will narrowly miss the marches and demonstrations by leaving Barcelona and Catalonia for Santander in Cantabria. We did arrive in Barcelona Airport during a labor strike by local security personnel, but so far that hasn’t affected our progress.

Apologies for the quality of the map (above) to illustrate our route. Mostly -but not strictly — we will follow the northernmost red line. In spring 2018 we walked one-quarter of the way down by starting in Lourdes (southwest France) and walking through mud to Irun in the Spanish border. From Irun we walked through Basque Country, including the beautiful seaside town of San Sebastien and the exciting small city of Bilbao and ending in Santander to return to the US for a family wedding.

Tomorrow we will pick up the Way from Santander, wending through the provinces of Cantabria and Asturias into Galicia. This is the ancient Camino del Norte, which is mostly even older than the Camino Frances,”The French Way, ” as is known the main route traveled today by the largest number of pilgrims (overall, 300,000 in 2017).

The Camino del Norte tracks closer to the coast than the equally or surpassingly ancient Camino Primitivo (the “original” or “Primitivo”) route. On the map (above) you can see the Camino Primitivo split off from the Camino del Norte about halfway across Spain. The Camino Frances runs even farther south, through the the agricultural heartlands of La Rioja (wine country) and the huge plateau called La Meseta.

We read that Caminos del Norte and Primitivo followed the tracks of the earliest pilgrims to Santiago de Campostela — starting in the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. — who were hardy pioneers who made their way through unmarked hills and sparsely populated valleys. Those first pilgrims stayed close to the coast to find occasional shelter and board and avoid getting lost. In the 12th century, the Camino de Santiago (the umbrella name for the varied routes to Santiago de Campostela) developed a significant infrastructure of albergues (inns), hostels, bridges, etc along the more southerly Camino Frances route, which had a generally more benign topography.

So today, relatively few pilgrims walk the Camino del Norte. We look forward to quiet, contemplative solitude, stunning scenery and fresh seafood as we take our trekking poles out of their mothballs and start walking tomorrow.

On Day Eight we will take a detour onto the Camino Primitivo to visit the historically significant town of Oviedo (see later posts). After returning to the Camino del Norte, we will take another detour on Day 23 to veer north to visit the famous port of A Coruna, location of the oldest functioning lighthouse in the world.

Although we’ve ended two previous Caminos in Santiago de Campostela (2015 and 2017) we are excited to finish there for a third time on Day 27. We will finally be able to walk through the cathedral’s Portico della Gloria, which had been closed for restoration for years, including both of our previous visits.

After Santiago de Campostela, we look forward to spending a few days with our dear friends in Vigo and then seeing our wonderful Camino friends who live in Madrid. From Madrid we will fly to Jordan and Egypt for our first-ever views of traces of those magnificent civilizations.

END OF ITINERARY.

 Please look in Recent Posts In September for the Dedication to Mary.

Our 2019 Camino de Santiago de Campostela – Camino del Norte is dedicated to Ed’s sister, Mary Muldoon MacDonald who was born to eternal life on July 22. She would have celebrated her 82nd birthday in August.

As you can see from the first photo above, she was vibrant and beautiful three weeks before her death. The second photo shows Mary, in blue, at the center of her nine siblings. The occasion was their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1979.

Mary was always at the center of the action, as a leader of the pack among her brothers and sisters, or in the home she made with her husband, Bill MacDonald, four daughters and a son. That home became the focus of countless cookouts and Christmas parties that linked the families and generations together in a warm and constant embrace.

At the wake, the stream of mourners included Mary’s entire yoga class, fellow volunteers at the homeless shelter and her co-workers and the owner of the bookstore where she worked until the week before she entered the hospital for surgery for a rare intestinal cancer. Mary was a ten-year survivor of Stage 3B ovarian cancer, so we had hoped that she might beat the odds once more to stay with us a little longer.

Mary died on the Feast of Mary Magdalene (July 22). The first reading was from Proverbs 31:10, 25-26: “Who can find a woman of worth? Far beyond jewels is her value. She is clothed with strength and dignity and laughs at the days to come. She opens her mouth in wisdom; kindly instruction is on her tongue.”

We carry Mary and her model of a full and loving life with us in our Camino, along with the memories of other family and friends who have gone on before us.

Anne and I are flying to Boston on September 7 to attend a memorial service for all our family and friends that have preceded us into the next life. 2019 is the 30th anniversary on our mother’s death and we have had  a memorial service every year in her honor. As other members of the Muldoon family, other relatives, and close friends have passed away we have added them to the memorial. This year we are remembering our sister Mary MacDonald.

We leave from Boston to Santander, Spain on September 9 and arrive on September 10. We start walking on September 11. We plan to walk into Santiago de Compostela on October 7.

We are dedicating this pilgrimage to Mary MacDonald and will have her pilgrim passport stamped as we make our way across northern Spain. Mary will receive an official Compostela when we arrive in Santiago.

It’s been more than a year since our last post and we are getting ready for our next Camino. We’ve had a beautiful summer marked by our sad loss of Ed’s sister, Mary (more on Mary in a separate post). Over the summer we’ve enjoyed spending time in the DC with area with many friends and family (see Ed with the boys: son, Bob and grandsons, Ryan (back row, center), Jack and Owen, above).
You may recall (see our 2018 posts) that we got literally bogged down in mud (“la boue”) in spring 2018 when we started in Lourdes in France and walked to Santander in Spain. That sticky experience led us to plan this Camino for early autumn instead of the spring (all our previous four pilgrimages have been in the springtime). And Ed was inspired to say that we should take our long-desired and long-postponed visit to Petra and the pyramids (Jordan and Egypt) at the end of this Camino. We had originally hoped to visit those places in 2010, but the Arab Spring intervened.

More on the dedication of this Camino to Mary Muldoon MacDonald, our itinerary, etc. to be put into future posts.

We made a video of our first Camino and posted it to You Tube in 2016. I am adding the link to that video to the blog. To view the video just click on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR3y77C7M2s

Anne and I will be adding photos and videos to our other Caminos as we get our photos organized.

Writing Sunday from Paris which we reached yesterday. Two days ago we were walking the beautiful coast from Guemes to Santander, wearing rain gear against fitful showers. Photos above show a bit of post-Camino collapse in Santander.

We took the bus back from Santander to Bilbao that same day because there were no flights to Paris out of Santander. We had an early morning flight on Friday out of Bilbao through Barcelona. With a two hour flight connection delay, that was a long travel day, but we were still able to go to Mass in Paris yesterday evening. It turned out that we unknowingly attended a pre-Vatican II mass, in which the priest kept his back to the congregation most of the time. Ed recognised some of the Latin, but not me. So our trip not only involved traveling through different countries, but also back in time to the 1950’s!

Thanks for reading our blog and accompanying us in our thoughts and hearts in this Camino. God willing, we’ll be back in the US Wednesday night.