Headed back to St. Jean, France

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When we started, I made the executive decision to start our Camino in Pamplona instead of 3 days down the trail from the normal starting place at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France. I didn’t want to deal with another border crossing during COVID and I figured we could go back at the end of the trip to finish the first 3 days.

About a week into our trip, we were convinced that we would just settle on our starting point as Pamplona. We figured we would be done walking at that point and missing out on the other 60km wasn’t that big of a deal.

That is until today. I was visiting with Blaise about what to do at the end of our trip since we had a few extra days. We had considered renting a car and going to Fatima. Getting an international drivers permit proved to be a huge headache. Then we considered going to Avila and seeing the place where St. Theresa and John of the Cross were from. However to be frank, I have seen enough 12th century churches and artwork to satiate me for some time to come.

We have come to the last section, Galicia

Blaise then suggested that we take the extra three day to walk to the ocean at Finistare, Spain. Many pilgrims keep walking after reaching Santiago to this end of the road, but the lack of spiritual meaning just seems kinda touristy to me. This is a pilgrimage. It was then that a plan was hatched to go back to the original plan of walking the 60k from St. Jean to Pamplona to officially finish the French Way.

To make it work we are going to have to split 6 days walk into 5 to allow for time to take the long 9 hour train ride back to the beginning. 30 days of walking transformed into a 9 hour ride.

So what do we want to do after a month of walking? Walk some more!

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