We put in the last training walk today. We are leaving for Paris tomorrow. It was hard to wake up at 4 AM and start walking in the dark but we did it. My body aches every where but after I started out walking for about 10 minutes, all the muscles begin to loosen up.

One of the thing we must obtain once we get to Le puy is a pilgrim passport where we will have it stamped at each village or town that we stay on our walk to show that we have walked all the mileage from Le Puy to St Jean Pied de Port. The pilgrim passport also get us into the refugios (in Spain) or gites des pelerins (in France). In France the pilgrim passport is called the credential. Upon arrival to Santiago the pilgrim passport, which has been stamped along the way, is brought to the nearby Pilgrim Office and a Compostela certificate (still written in Latin and confirming the completion of the pilgrimage) is generally issued. Walkers and pilgrims on horseback must have completed at least the last 100km and cyclists the last 200 km, in one stretch, to qualify.

The Holy Year in Santiago:

Whenever St James’s day (25th July) falls on a Sunday, the cathedral declares a Holy or Jubilee Year. Holy Years fall every 6, 5, 6, and 11 years: the most recent ones were 1982, 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2010. The next Holy Years will be 2021, 2027 and 2032.

The Puerta Santa (Holy Door), which gives access to the Cathedral from the Plaza de la Quintana is opened on 31st December on the eve of each Holy Year, and walled up again a year later.

As in the past, pilgrims reaching Santiago during a Holy Year, and fulfilling the conditions for it, are granted a plenary indulgence; and they are still years when particularly large numbers of pilgrims arrive.

The Jubilee of Le Puy:

The inhabitants of Le Puy-en-Velay are famous for commemorating the Jubilee of Le Puy, a celebration when the feast of annunciation falls on the same date as Good Friday. This occurred last in 2005, will occur next in 2025 but the subsequent occurrence will not be until 2157. The Jubilee of Le Puy is the oldest aside from those of Rome and Jerusalem, taking its original cue from the predictions of a monk Bernhard who predicted the end of the world in 992 when the feast of the Annunciation would fall on Good Friday. The number of pilgrims to Le Puy was so remarkable that, after the dread date had safely passed, Pope John Paul XV declared that each such date would be marked by a Jubilee.The first such anniversary occurred in 1065. In the Jubilee of 1407, the press of the crowd was so great that two hundred pilgrims suffocated. Of three Jubilees in the twentieth century, the Jubilee of 1932 attracted over 300,000 pilgrims.

This summer of 2015 is not a Holy Year so our pilgrimage should be pretty quiet. And we like it that way. We have been walking certain section of the Camino that is crowded, it is very annoying. Long line at the restrooms, long wait at for meals and snacks at restaurants, noisy and crowded stretch on the route are not appealing to us at all. And we also dislike big cities and prefer small quiet villages.

One more day to go. Tomorrow we are off to catch our flight to Paris ….

Bon Chemin!
Buen Camino!