We leave on the evening of the 11th on an overnight flight on Iberia Airlines from Boston to Madrid. The weather here in Maine has been cold and wet for about two weeks now and its been tough to get in the training miles. But this week we determined to go out, rain or not and have gotten in three good days. The trouble is its all been basically flat walks on local conservation trust trails, like the great system at the Smith Preserve in Kennebunkport. So tomorrow we are heading to the only "hump" in Southern Maine, "Big A" or Mount Agamenticus, with a heart-thumping elevation of 622'. Hey, a couple or three jaunts up and down can't hurt, right?
On the Sanabres, our first day brings a 600 meter accent on the 21 km (12.8 miles) walk to Cea but this route is much less vertically challenging than the more popular Camino Frances. The rest of our journey will take seven days and we'll finish with a three day stay in historic Santiago. Here's our itinerary:
- Ourense to Cea - 22 km
- Cea to Oseira - 9 km
- Oseira to Castro Dozon - 20 km
- Castro Dozon to A Laxe - 18 km
- A Laxe to Bandiera - 16 km
- Bandiera to Lestado - 25 km
- Lestado to Santiago - 9 km
This route - the Camino Sanabres - is much less heavily traveled than the Frances, which last year had some 250,000 people walking some or all of it. That quantity of walkers in the high summer season, or on the last section from Sarria to Santiago, is way too many and is not much fun. The Sanabres, in comparison, only had some 9,000 walkers. The 120 km we will walk will qualify us for the compostela certificate, given for over a thousand years to those pilgrims who have completed the last 100 km on foot or 200 km on horseback or bike and attest they have made their pilgrimage for spiritual or religious reasons.
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