Tom Courtney's Blog – September 2011 Archive (3)

Pamplona is the capital of Navarra, a semi-autonimous province, the south being more Castilian, the north, Basque.  The Basque are a fiercely independent people.  Linguists tell us that the Basque language, Euskara, is one of Europe´s oldest and has no know relationship  to any other language.  It is as if the basque people were always living on this land.  Picasso´s…

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The hike from Roncesvalles to Pamplona took two days, climbing and descending the foothills of the Pyrenese.  Most of the trail was on mountain paths, ascending to ridges and dropping into the valley of the Rio Arga, which the trail crossed and recrossed.  Early in the morning, before dawn, I hiked with the north star to my back and Orion high overhead, passing through the ¨woodlands of the witches,¨ a dense beech forest.  During the 16th century, it is said that covens of witches practiced…

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I have wanted to hike el Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St. James, ever since I read Pualo Cuelho´s book The Pilgrimage more than a decade ago.  Now, with the publication of Walkabout Northern California: Hiking Inn to Inn this spring, I decided to give myself the gift of a 500 mile trek across northern Spain.

 

The legend of the Camino began in AD 813 when Pelayo, a religious hermit, heard the song of angels and followed a star to an ancient Roman… Continue