consensus: Least inspiring segments

[Carlos Mentley]

Please forgive me for including the previous message, but I wanted to
second every suggestion made in it.  There is a very real sense of
continuity to walking the Camino, which is ruined by cutting out
segments in the middle.  Please do consider starting a little closer to
Santiago and then walking the rest of the way!

Even with the unattractive approach to Burgos, I found the meseta simply
wonderful to walk ... and that was in real solitude, in the middle of
January.

That's my three cents, for what it's worth ...

Carlos

"E. O. Pederson" wrote:

> Obtaining consensus on this matter is likely to be impossible, for
> personal tastes are highly variable.  About the only stretch most
> walkers consider unpleasant enough to miss is the latter part of the
> days walk between San Juan Ortega and Burgos, a route that takes one
> around an airport, across an expressway and thence 6 km or so
> alongside a busy highway through uninspiring industrial suburbs to the
> center of town. [A newer route avoiding some of that urban discomfort
> is available, but I have not walked it.] Taking a bus from the urban
> edge into central Burgos, however, only makes a somewhat long day a
> little shorter.  On my second walk in 2001, because of the events of
> 9/11 and travel difficultes for a week thereafter, I had to cut my
> walk three days short and opted to take a bus from Belorado into
> Burgos.  While San Juan Ortega is well worth seeing, I decided to give
> it a miss my second time on the Camino and cut! 2 days of walking,
> avoiding suburban Burgos in the process. I cut another day by taking a
> bus from Mansilla de las Mulas into Leon, missing the suburbs of the
> latter city (nowhere near as unpleasant as the eastern suburbs of
> Burgos), a choice made by a number of European walkers who joined me
> on the bus.
>
> Many pilgrims would choose to miss all or parts of the Meseta from
> Burgos to Mansilla de las Mulas, but I, for one, would have felt badly
> cheated if I had not walked that stretch. I found the route across the
> Meseta one of the most inspiring parts of the trek to Santiago. The
> vastness, aridity and unpopulated nature of the open landscape, and
> the severe weather that can sometimes hit unexpectedly, give a little
> taste of how terrifying the pilgrimage must have been in the middle
> ages. But, of course, we know there are comfortable refugios for us at
> the end of the day.
>
> If I had to cut a full week from the pilgrimage, my choice would be to
> begin at Pamplona, Estella, or perhaps even Logrono and walk the
> distance from there. I most certainly would cut out the stretch from
> St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles.  While there is a perverse
> fascination with starting at St. Jean among American walkers, I would
> never again waste the day crossing the Pyrenees and would begin at
> Roncesvalles, where most Spaniards "doing the whole Camino" start.
> The route napoleon is far too difficult for the payoff it provides,
> especially as a first day of walking, jet lagged and out of shape from
> riding trains or busses. From Roncesvalles to Pamplona the route is
> pretty enough, but compared to the stretch from Somport and Jaca to
> Puente la Reina (Navarra) on the Aragonese route, or to later
> stretches on the Camino Frances, it is uninspiring. This, of course,
> expresses personal preferences.
>
>  E. O. Pederson
>
> Seattle, WA
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.oakapple.net/pipermail/gocamino/attachments/20030227/697ac5fb/attachment.htm