27/06/2024 – On the Camino Finisterra 3

Day 43 –Despite our lack of sleep in A Picota, we shared a table with 2 American women yesterday evening and found ourselves chatting (over a total of 3 bottles of wine!) until nearly 11pm. Mollie is only walking the Camino Finisterre, having flown into Santiago from South Carolina only on Saturday (her first ever foreign trip). The more confident and worldly Janice started in St Jean-Pied-de-Port on May 1st.

Today was a truly lovely way to complete our walk: blue skies, a warm breeze, pleasant walking from sea level to hilltop with great views and tangy, soft pine paths.

Fisterra is a quaint seaside town, full of hostels, ice cream and souvenir shops and a spectacular beach. We spent the evening beachcombing. The scallop shell is the sign of the pilgrim of St James, because, on reaching Fisterra, they took a shell from the shore. We went seeking for a good handful, mostly clam shells (the scallops are long gone), which we hope to give as unostentatious, but authentic, gifts.

We only had 16km to complete today, so we arrived at our hotel by 11:30am, confirmed our reservation and left our backpacks. The Faro (Lighthouse) of Fisterra or “Finis Terrae” (the end of the world) is about 3.5km further down the coast, so we finished our walk unencumbered. We popped James the Duck onto the 0,000 km way marker for a photo. Then, we climbed up the stairs to the “End of the World” Albergue and ordered 2 large beers, which we enjoyed on their terrace, overlooking the lighthouse and the ocean. It was such a great way to complete our adventure.

I was happy to walk into Santiago. The pilgrim mass in the Cathedral was special. The botafumerio swinging was our “The Way” moment. Perhaps because I knew we were going on, I did not experience the sense of completion, uplift, that I did today.

It was a real “holiday” vibe – pine trees, giving glimpses of hidden coves; the sound of the sea ever-present, both near and far; gulls mewing, riding the wind; a riot of glowing purple bougainvilleas, popping like fireworks from stone walls, and wild nasturtiums, gleaming orange and sun-yellow, snaking through the ground cover. We ended up at 22km, but it felt like just stretching our legs on the way to the beach.

The maps we were provided (supported by the way markers) said that the entire way from France to the sea was 864km. Our watches say that we have in fact walked 1,069km (1,027, excluding rest-day walking in Borgos, Leon, Santiago). The extra 205km comes from exploring our rest stops, traversing steep inclines (both up and down) and taking “complementario” routes sometimes, which tend to be additive, but prettier, versus the “standard” Camino. I recorded 1.3 million steps in the last 43 days, an average of 30,000 steps per day. We feel a good sort of pride about this. It is an accomplishment as well as a privilege.