This post continues with my long drive up to Santiago de Compostela. As and when I find available net access, I will be able catch-up and post my reports in something approaching "real time".
Following the Camino de Santiago as much as I could from Leon, I got first to Rabanal, then Foncebadon where I was amazed to find people living there. When I walked in 1999 I do remember some work being done but other than that it was deserted and had been for years.
I stopped into Bar Gaia with a few bookmarks to leave for Pilgrimage to Heresy. The owner (Enrique) and I got into conversation. When I mentioned Priscillian his eyes lit up. Enrique is one of that strange breed of Camino afficionados “a character”: middle aged, handsome, beard, piercing eyes,: a friend of Tomas from Manjarin just up the road. Someone I wouldnt want to cross swords with, but, I suspect, someone who would do anything to help someone he liked...He seemed to like me.
We talked of the Way of St. James and the sacred feminine, of the significance of Finisterre; of the almost certainty that many have walked this Camino of ours long before Christ. I left him with a book and hope he enjoys it. I then went on to leave copies for Tomas and also Jesus Jato of Ave Fenix in Villafranca del Bierzo, both people and places which figure in Peregrinos de la Herejia.
Even being a MotorPilgrim in Simone, my Volvo preciosa it was a wonderful feeling to be seeing all those places again: places familiar both to me AND Miranda. That feeling stayed with me past Villafranca (especially in El Acebo: what a jewel of a village lost in time) until I past Piedrafita and O Cebreiro and got to Gonzar where somehow it left me.
But by then I was getting nearer and nearer to Compostela, and I felt drawn to it like a true pull of destiny. What was awaiting me in the city of my dreams THIS time…
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