Walking in the Pyrenees

[Rosina Lila]

Hello again,
There is really no blueprint, or copyright, on how to be a pilgrim.  The
undertaking may be different for everyone, I should think. But when I spoke to the
priest in Roncesvalles in my first pilgrimage he told me that the church
deeply disapproves of, and, in fact, proscribes unnecessary self-inflicted
physical suffering for quasi or pseudo-religious reasons.
While being able to carry one's own backpack all the way must, indeed, be a
source of immense personal and physical satisfaction, (like running the
marathon) those of us who are unable to do so need not feel the lesser pilgrims for
it.
The only requirements that I know about are for obtaining the Compostela,
which itself may not be everyone's desire.-I know of several pilgrims who have
walked from as far away as Assisi and have not gotten one-.  But for those
pilgrims that seek  the Compostela, the requirement is that they walk at least 100
kilometers or ride a bicycle for 200 hundred. Whether they carry their own
backpack or not is of no consequence whatever.
I should have mentioned in the earlier message that when the "hospitaleros"
arrived to open the albergue they would take inside the backpacks that had been
left outside earlier by taxi drivers and other carriers. I asked on one
occasion whether taking someone's backpack in would insure its owner a berth in the
albergue, and I was told that it would not, that the berths would only be
allotted when the owner of the backpack herself or himself arrived.
Regards
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