All about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

El Correo Gallego reports today that between 140 and 160 seats were sold of the 189 available seats on the first Ryanair flights between Santiago de Compostela and Madrid. This means that about 80% of the seats were sold, a pretty good number. As of yesterday, Ryanair flies to and from Madrid twice daily.

According to El Correo Gallego, may furure flights are also already sold out, especially those on weekends and dates around some key christmast dates.

So as of yesterday, the price war between Iberia, Spanair and Ryanair is on on this popular route.

Many pilgrims in the forum are wondering about if they should buy a walking stick, what type and if this stick can be brought with you on the plane. Another option is to just pick up a stick on your way and walking it to Santiago.This option is cheap, flexible and gives someone in Santiago free wood for their fireplace.

The photo above show the number of walking sticks left behind at the pilgrims office in Santiago de Compostela.

More references to walking sticks can be found here.

As Ryanair is about to open their two new daily routes from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid, Iberia and now also Spanair have announced that they will lower prices. All this according to today’s El Correo Gallego.

Iberia is said to lower prices on a Santiago - Madrid flight from about 140 euro to as low as 60 euro. Todays article in El Correo Gallego indicates that Spanair is willing to go as low as 22 euros per flight (taxes probably not included).

Ryanair start Novermber 18th (2008) with two daily flights from Santiago de Compostela to Madrid.

Photo from La Voz de Galicia

La Voz de Galicia has an interesting article today that tells of a bear that was killed on the highway between Ponferrada and O Cebreiro. This is pilgrim territory, so I thought I would create a post on this here.

Bears are not common in this area, and this is the first time one has been killed by a car. The bear itself was about 1,80 meters tall and had a weight of about 100 kg.

The exact location of the accident was at Trabadelo in the province of León, about 4 km from O Cebreiro.

This series of articles was compiled by Johnnie Walker for the Confraternity of St James and with their kind permission they are reproduced here.

This week in our pilgrimage series we read extracts from the diary of a pilgrim who walked the best known route to Santiago de Compostela – the Camino Francés. Marion Marples from London spent 37 autumn days walking from Pamplona. She describes her Sundays.

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This series of articles was compiled by Johnnie Walker for the Confraternity of St James and with their kind permission they are reproduced here.

Last year over 100,000 pilgrims walked or rode on horseback or bicycle to Santiago de Compostela in North West Spain. Just less than half were Spanish, the others coming from 114 different countries around the world. The pilgrimage is truly international.

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This series of articles was compiled by Johnnie Walker for the Confraternity of St James and with their kind permission they are reproduced here.

Journey’s End

All routes to Santiago de Compostela end at the great Cathedral which dominates this beautiful medieval town. Therein lies the tomb of the Apostle St James who has inspired millions of pilgrims for over 500 years to journey to this place.

The Pillar, the Hug and the Tomb
Each day pilgrims arrive at the Cathedral Square but their journey is not at an end, they still have things to do.

Entering the Cathedral each pilgrim first touches the Pillar depicting the Tree of Jesse where now you can actually put your fingers into grooves marked by centuries of hands.

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Ryanair has announced several new routes in Spain today, one of them a new route between Santiago de Compostela and Madrid. This is fantastic news, since Iberia will again get some competition on travelers between Santiago and the capital. About a week ago, El Correo Gallego had an article about how it was cheaper to travel from Porto to New York that it was from Santiago to Madrid with Iberia.

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This series of articles was compiled by Johnnie Walker for the Confraternity of St James and with their kind permission they are reproduced here.

Each year 100,000 people walk to Santiago de Compostela in North-west Spain. They take many routes following in the footsteps of pilgrims of the middle ages. The most famous route is the Camino Francés a journey of 778 kilometres from the border of France and Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

The Saint, the priest and the paintbrush

The Saint

St James was Zebedee’s son and brother of St John the Evangelist.

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This series of articles was compiled by Johnnie Walker for the Confraternity of St James and with their kind permission they are reproduced here

Where are you going for your holidays this year?  There are so many choices it can be hard to decide: Will you go to beach resort or on an adventure holiday? To somewhere in the UK or abroad?

Many people decide to make a different kind of journey. They decide to separate themselves a little from their day to day world to travel to a destination with special spiritual significance. We call them pilgrims.

Photo by Gareth Thomas

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