Ancient Trackways

[Carol Bradley]

        It was more because of a long-standing interest in how the ancients
interacted with the land, specifically northern Spain,  than any sincere
interest in pilgrimage that I wanted to visit the Camino.  If I want to
test my physical endurance (not high!), I will start running locally, or
get my horse into shape for endurance riding, both of which I truly don't
have time to do at this stage in my life.  If I want to be a meditative
pilgrim on ancient trackways, a good place for me to start would be to ride
same horse on the old highway here between two  towns (old by North
American standards), most of which is now either a greenway, or a
substandard road. (I was fascinated by how much of the Camino had been
overtaken by modern highways).
        So I was a cultural tourist for 10 days as we drove across northern Spain,
and 3 days along the coastline as we drove back. My fellow traveller felt
guilty enough about this that she declined to put her fingers in the
imprints in the door of the cathedral.  I realized it was okay to do this,
not to be too pure about the effort needed; after all it is an effort to
raise the $ to get on a plane and be away from home for 3 weeks.
        One of the things about compacting the journey into this length of time
was seeing the differences in places more clearly.
        The Spanish coastline along the Bay of Biscay is one of the places, like
caves in Provence and the Dordogne in France, where humans have lived in
relative peace with the environment for 20,000+ years.  Although the Caves
at Altamira are no longer accessible to most people, we were able to visit
another cave with paintings and carvings.  This was a rough coastline and
not easy to move along in ancient times. It must have been easier to move
up the river valleys to the ridge of the central plain, and move along it
on an east-west route.
        My point here is that I suspect the path to Compostella is actually much
more ancient than the  legends of St James and the Middle Ages, and
folllows ancient pathways from just after the last Ice Age.  I am not an
archaeologist, but would be interested in hearing about work that has been
done on the pre-Pilgrimage route. Looking at the guide to the route I have,
it appears that some of the wells must be very ancient.