<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Lucida Sans Unicode" LANG="0">Hello again,<BR>
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.<BR>
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.<BR>
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.<BR>
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. <BR>
Regards</FONT></HTML>