Camino Porteguese - Part 11

I Did It My Way - Padron to Camino de Santiago

I left Porto on Sept 1. My Dad's birthday. The loss of both parents weighs heavily on the soul. It's the little things that remind you of the loss. The baseball games my mom loved so much. The homemade dinners growing up when the whole family would sit together. A television program or book my dad would have loved. A day at the beach meant going directly to the bathroom to take a shower and rinse of the sand. Oh, how my mother hated sand.

Foggy morning and late summer humidity turn to rainy autumn days

Big coastal cities to small town villages and coastal woods

Boardwalks and cement pavements I trod day after day

The Camino provided friendship and solitude

The Camino provided a safe and secure place

I travel now with a newfound sense of accomplishment

I cried and laughed and smiled

But most of all, I have no regrets

And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain

My friends, I'll say it's clear. I travelled each highway

And more I did it my way

It was still raining as I left my hostel for the last time on the Camino on October 1. I didn't plan to end on the 1st. In fact, I didn't know how long it would take me to walk the Camino when I started. It was a peaceful morning through wooded trails. The smell of damp flora filled the air, easing my troubled mind. I don't talk much about Oct 1 2017. How close I came to being at the Las Vegas Route 1 Harvest Music Festival during the massacre where 58+ lives were lost. How the sense of dread and premonition manifested in a migraine that made me turn away. How much it weighs on my mind seven years later. How much I needed to end on this day.

I consider myself more a spiritual than religious person. But walking today there were signs everywhere. A flower with a cross in the background. A rainbow park bench next to a church. Buddha statues in a family's yard. A great sense of peace and accomplishment with only 10 kilometers left on this grand journey.

Four kilometers left. The signs of civilization reemerge. Cars honking on the highway. The sights of people on the busy sidewalks in Santiago. The last half kilometer through ancient alleyways all with one place in mind. One last turn and there it is the Cathedral Santiago de Compostela. Kilometer 0. Started in 1075 and consecrated in 1211, the cathedral is considered to be the burial place of Saint James, one of Jesus apostles. The basilica has historically been a place of pilgrimage on the Way of St James since the Early Middle Ages and marks the traditional end of the pilgrimage route. The building is a Romanesque structure, with later Gothic and Baroque additions.

I spent several days in Santiago taking a walking tour of the cathedral itself and attending the traditional pilgrim mass. It's time to say goodbye to the Iberian Peninsula exploring Portugal and Spain. But new adventures are just around the corner.