Where the Roads Lead

By DeMar Southard

Join this intrepid author on the ancient Roman Vias Domitia and Francigena as he makes a pilgrimage to Rome from Barcelona. Along the way don't be surprised if you encounter strange toilets, unusual ways of drinking coffee, more than a few interesting people, and a miracle or two. With not much else to do during lonely hours between villages and cities, the author has time for general ramblings of an idle mind on the subjects of history, culture, politics, war and peace, and myriad other topics as he makes the 1200-mile journey to the Eternal City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DeMar Southard
• Release date: Jun 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370438907

DeMar Southard

Born in 1957 in Pasadena, California. Graduated with honors, Bachelor of Music, University of Iowa Master of Business Administration, University of Iowa. Certificate in Copy Editing, Kirkwood College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)

Book preview

Where the Roads Lead

By DeMar Southard

Text copyright 2017 © by DeMar Southard

Cover photos copyright 2017 © by DeMar Southard

All rights reserved.

Quoting of sections allowed with attribution to the author.

ISBN 978-1370438907

With gratitude…

This work is dedicated to all my dear friends in Spain, France, Italy, and the United States, without whose help in so many ways I would never have been able to complete the journey described herein. A special note of gratitude is due to friends who gave me financial support, allowing me to not be reduced to a beggar somewhere north of Rome: Jeanie Anderson, Chuck Ashford, Guy Holly, and Marcos and Rubina Carmona. Heartfelt thanks go to my brother, David, for his car-sales skills and shipping, without complaint, necessary items to Spain. To my brother, Don, and sister-in-law, Mary, I would like to extend a note of gratitude for providing a staging area on more than one occasion from where I could fly out of the country, and especially for Mary’s delicious, homemade, authentic Italian spaghetti sauce. I also owe more gratitude than they’ll ever know to my children, Austin and Angela, who fully support their father’s wanderlust in every way, allowing me, on occasion, to walk the Earth without feeling guilty for taking myself so far away for so long. Lastly, I thank my parents, Don (requiescat in pace) and Linnie, for raising children unafraid to leap into the void, not knowing exactly what might happen, but confident in their ability to handle whatever comes.

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit."

"This suffering will yield us yet a pleasant tale to tell."

From Virgil’s Aeneid (book 1, line 203)

Prelude

Setting: The Puerta de la Gloria of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northwest Spain. This imposing medieval cathedral had been consecrated 801 years before I stood before it, one of hundreds arriving on this particular day, these hundreds being only the most recent of throngs of pilgrims who had arrived at this same spot over the past eight centuries, each of whom had his¹ own motivation for having made the journey and his own emotions upon arrival at the titular² end.

My emotion? Despair.

Reaching Santiago de Compostela should have been accompanied by a feeling of unbridled joy, tremendous relief, and an immense sense of accomplishment and pride. By all rights, it should have been accompanied by a time of serenity, of finally being able to relax and bask in the moment, the end of almost two months of heat, rain, sore and blistered feet, monotonous food, and snore-filled nights in pilgrim albergues. I had arrived at this spot in front of the Cathedral of Santiago after walking almost the entire breadth of northern Spain, beginning at the monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona in Catalunya³, then heading west through Aragon, Navarra, La Rioja, Castile y Leon, and finally to Galicia. Even with the trials noted above, every step of the way, somehow, was a joy. In fact, I look back on those fifty days as the happiest of my life. But standing there in the expansive plaza before the ancient cathedral, its ancient façade staring down at me, I had to face the unbearable fact that that miniscule chapter of my life had come to an unwelcome and too-abrupt end.

For many people, the Camino de Santiago is brutally difficult. They say that after about a week or two on the trail they begin to wonder what it was that ever possessed them to undertake such a grueling walk. Blistered feet, sunburn, incredible heat, chilling rain, noisy albergues, bedbugs, and no end of other miscellaneous maladies can have a more than chilling effect on a nice little walk across northern Spain on one of the Caminos de Santiago⁴. I walked through two weeks of 100+ degree temperatures, got lost in the desert of Aragon, suffered from blisters upon blisters from less than perfect-fitting boots, was exhausted at the end of every single day, lost twenty pounds over the course of the fifty-day journey (not that that was a bad thing), and will tell anyone willing to listen that still, through and in spite of all that, those were the fifty happiest days of my life⁵. Those days were even more blessed due to the people I met in Logroño and farther along the Camino who, most of them, had begun to the Northeast of that city, taking what is known as the French route while I walked the Camino Catalan.

Standing with my back to the cathedral and forcing a smile for the camera, Tilly, a Camino amigo from Leipzig (technically an amiga, but the rhythm loses something with perfect Spanish grammar) took my photograph. I felt numb, lost, almost in a state of shock. I had known this day was coming and I began feeling the pre-effects of my arrival at the cathedral some two weeks prior. As each day passed and the kilometer markers along the Camino, indicating the distance to Santiago, indicated smaller and smaller numbers, a sense of dread became increasingly difficult to ignore. It’s not as if I were simply enjoying myself, having a good time as if on a vacation. It was much different, very much more than that. I was in a state of contentment and near bliss such as I had never known. All was not perfect; as I’ve mentioned and will repeat, my feet ached constantly, I knew I was overspending my budget, I was growing frustrated with not being able to communicate easily with my new friends who all spoke Spanish and Catalan, but very little English. (I spoke enough Spanish to get by, but not nearly enough to converse with others on an adult level.) Yet, I existed every day in a state of what I can only term pure contentment, as if I had been transported to somewhere between heaven and Earth, with no thought of the morrow, feeling as close to God and as well-cared for as the lilies of the field. Life was gratifying and enjoyable, just plain old enjoyable in a way it had never been before. My one saving grace as I stood under the shadow of the cathedral was that I planned to continue on to Finisterre on the Atlantic coast, another four days walk. At that point, I would truly have to face the end.

Moving on

I had planned to go to Granada after completing the Camino to compose for myself a new life, hopefully finding work as an autonomous English teacher. Coming from a country outside of the European Union, I didn’t have an automatic legal right to work, so all the language schools in town advertising for English teachers were of no use to me. The economy is Spain was, and unfortunately remains, very depressed. If a school needs an English teacher they will first hire a Spaniard who speaks English. If they truly require a native English speaker, they will hire an EU citizen, someone from Great Britain. (As I complete this manuscript, Great Britain has just voted to exit the EU. If their government follows the people’s will, maybe I’ll be able to get a teaching job at a Spanish school someday, as I’ll then be on the same legal footing as a British teacher. Hope springs eternal.) I had looked into the possibility of somehow getting a work visa, but because of the basket-case economy, that was a virtual impossibility. So I would do the next best thing—live in Spain as an illegal, working for cash as an English tutor and after three years I would be able to apply for residency and the legal right to work. I have friends who have done the same. Why couldn’t I?

I had such high and, as it turned out, unrealistic hopes. After a couple of months my cash reserves were exhausted and I was beginning to live on credit card advances. I didn’t know it at the time, but the chances of finding private English students in July, August, and September in Granada are somewhere between slim and none. The university is not in session during those months and there are few people in that small city outside of university students who need or want to learn English. To compound the problem, I was suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome, except, as opposed to the better known PTSD, mine was the result of having lived through an other-worldly experience that was so close to heaven I found it difficult to come back to life on Earth, even in Granada, where I had dreamed of living for years. Broke, depressed, dazed, confused, and feeling aimless, I returned to the United States to try to figure out what to do next.

Meanwhile, back in Iowa

Returning to the family homestead—never a perfect situation for a middle-aged old fart who values privacy and independence to about the same degree as most people value air—I was nevertheless grateful to have someplace to go. My father had passed away earlier that year so my mother was glad to have someone in the house to help out, although I can’t honestly say I was of much use in my PTSD state. I did what I could but I was severely impaired by my psychological condition. I desperately needed something to look forward to, something I could reasonably imagine might get me back to a state of happiness I had experienced on the Camino. Sure, I know, the Dalai Lama would say you can be happy wherever you are, but I haven’t quite reached that state of spiritual development; I still need some external stimuli.

After about a month of sitting around aimlessly, sometimes thinking, but mostly just sitting (and painting the wrap-around front porch of my mother’s house—I’m not a complete bump on a log), I bit the bullet and started looking for another project management contract. That was my career before heading to Spain to walk the Camino. I figured I could go back to it temporarily, live as cheaply as possible, save money for three years, and return to Spain with enough cash to get me by until I could slowly and gradually develop a private English tutoring business.

The best laid plans of mice and men

The first contract I landed took me to Phoenix, Arizona. I was to begin work the week before Christmas. If you’ve never wintered in Iowa, you may not know that its climate is frigid, cold, snowy, and scrape-the-hard-frost-off-your-windshield-every-freaking-morning miserable. Arriving in Phoenix, I was beginning to feel better already. Yes, I also felt a little guilty leaving my mother, but my younger brother lives just down the road (twenty miles away, but that’s just down the road in Iowa) so I didn’t allow my feelings of guilt to keep me from enjoying the weather of Phoenix in winter.

But contract work can be funny. (Not funny ha-ha.) I moved myself down to Phoenix, rented an apartment, even found an excellent flamenco guitar teacher, and then received information that my contract agency hadn’t quite got all the details finalized with the company I’d be working at. They wondered if I might take a $6,000 pay cut, and oh, by the way, the overtime I was told would be forthcoming was not to be. I’d already accepted much less than my normal hourly rate because the overtime they told me I’d be able to earn might make up for some of the reduced hourly wage. At this point it was all about the cash—putting money in the bank. I made the decision to continue looking for a contract with a more reputable company, which I soon found in Seattle.

I returned to the mobile phone company I’d worked at before heading off for my Camino adventure. I worked nights coordinating network changes and other activities that can only be done when most of the customers are sleeping and the retail stores are closed. But heck, my kids are grown, I’m not married, no dog to take care of, no grass to mow. Working nights was just fine with me. Sometimes after work I’d stop at the bar/pool hall and have a beer or two while I practiced eight-ball. The fact that it was nine-o’clock in the morning didn’t faze me; it was just my form of after-work decompression. I was much better-paid here than in Phoenix and was finally banking some money. Then three months later, the dreaded reorganization struck and all the contractors in my department were unceremoniously laid off.

Such is the life of a contractor.

It only took about a month to land the next contract. I won’t bore you with the details, but it also lasted about three months.

More bad luck?

I tend to see the hand of God in all things. Was He trying to tell me something, as in, when one door closes and all that? By this time I’d had three doors shut in my face. I’m dense and slow to take a hint, but still… And I have to admit, I don’t mind being pushed in a direction I want to go anyway.

I moved up the date of my return to Spain just a little—a year to be exact. I packed up the car with all my worldly belongings and headed out. (Everything I own fits in a small four-door sedan. If it doesn’t, I don’t own it.) I headed back to Iowa for the winter. Living expenses were much less there and I figured I’d find some kind of work or just make some repairs on my mother’s 150-year-old house. Either way I’d make myself useful and have a bed to sleep in until returning to Spain.

My resume was still active on Monster.com, and I received a call from a recruiter not long after I’d arrived back in the frigid Midwest, asking if I would consider a contract at a local office of a financial services company only fifteen miles from where I was living. I rarely turn down an interview. It doesn’t hurt to look, even though I’d made up my mind to leave for Spain in May.

Wouldn’t you know? They offered me the contract. Damn! Now what do I do? The idea of karma weighs heavily on my mind. I try, sometimes very unsuccessfully, to do no harm to anyone, partly just because I don’t like being a louse, partly because I don’t want bad karma coming back to me. The recruiter called me after the interview to let me know that the company wanted to offer me the contract, but I got a bad case of conscience and told him I’d love to take it, but only if they were okay with me leaving at the end of April. He thanked me for my honesty and said he’d get back to me.

If you’ll stay with me through the book you’ll see that this kind of thing happens often enough that I have stopped being surprised by it: The recruiter called back to say that the company really only wanted someone to fill in for a woman on pregnancy leave. She was planning to return at the end of April. Sometimes doors open and close at just the right time.

He who knows the surface of the earth and the topography of a country only through the examination of maps is like a man who learns the opera of Meyerbeer or Rossini by reading only reviews in the newspapers. The brush of landscape artists Lorrain, Ruysdael, or Calame can reproduce on canvas the sun's ray, the coolness of the heavens, the green of the fields, the majesty of the mountains...but what can never be stolen from Nature is that vivid impression that she alone can and knows how to impart—the music of the birds, the movement of the trees, the aroma peculiar to the place—the inexplicable something the traveler feels that cannot be defined and which seems to awaken in him distant memories of happy days, sorrows and joys gone by, never to return!

Dr. Jose P. Rizal

What was I thinking? Who knows why anyone does the things he does? To build a baseball field out of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere? That’s only fictional, but it’s as likely to have happened as for someone to decide to walk two and a half months through foreign lands to get to a city that holds no strong spiritual or emotional appeal for himself. But that’s exactly what I did. In truth, although I am a converted Catholic, I can’t say I have as yet been able to grasp the dogma of the Church as literal truth. You might say I’m more spiritual than religious. While I believe that Peter was the first leader of the group in Rome that called themselves Christians, I don’t believe that he was the one and only person, along with those elected to follow him, that had a connection with God and have been conduits for spiritual revelation through the centuries. More, a lot of water has passed under that bridge and with the Borgia popes as only the most overt evidence, I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit has had a consistent hand in the guidance of Catholic leadership, as much as He may have tried through the ages. And, while Peter’s remains are in the cathedral that bears his name, I don’t hold any belief that being near them, making a trek through heat and cold, rain and wind, spending money I really couldn’t afford by any definition of rationality, is going to benefit my eternal soul or make God sit up and notice me any more than if I had stayed home and gone to work every day. And while I am undoubtedly in dire need of plenary indulgence, I don’t believe that walking to a big building, no matter how impressive or beautiful (and St. Peter’s Basilica is impressive and beautiful in the extreme), no matter how difficult the journey, even if the bones of a major saint are in that building, is going to induce God to grant it to me.

But… Mythology and symbolism are potent ingredients of the human psyche and invaluable to the spirit. Joseph Campbell said,

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is… Myth is made of permanent truths, truths that have stood the test of time. Mythology is not a lie; mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth—penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

There is undeniably strong mythology all tied up with Rome—the seat of the Roman Catholic Church—with Santiago de Compostela, with Jerusalem. They are epicenters of Western mythological thinking of the origins and reason for human kind, of our place in the universe and on Earth, of the ideas of The Fall and the possibility of redemption. Western culture’s ideas of good and evil, revealed truth, temporal-ness and eternity all flow through the river that began in the Fertile Crescent, thence to Jerusalem, through Asia Minor, to Greece, then continued to Rome and spread throughout the Roman empire which spawned European civilization. To seek out a deeper understanding of that mythology and its source, I felt the need to step outside of my routine and put myself in a place of discomfort and unfamiliarity. I purposely wanted to be disoriented and unsure of myself, reliant upon the kindness of strangers, upon the Universe/God. At times I got more than I bargained for. What seemed like such a grand and glorious adventure sometimes was anything but. Cold, lost, wet, and hungry can make you reconsider the best-laid plans, and there were times I thought I would have preferred to have just taken another walk to Santiago along a well-marked route with bars and hostels evenly spaced along the way.

Even more than two years after standing in the plaza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, as I write this, I find myself asking what it all meant. There’s an aphorism: Ask a Chinaman his opinion of the French Revolution. His answer is, Too early to tell. We westerners, especially Americans, like to have our answers tomorrow—better, before dinner tonight. We want to know the end of the story before we start the book to ensure the read will be a profitable use of time. More than two years after walking into the Eternal City, I still don’t know what benefit I received from the experience. More than four years after walking into Santiago de Compostela, I still don’t know what that pilgrimage was all about. What I do know, is that I would be a different person had I not made both pilgrimages, Santiago and Rome. We’re the culmination of what we’re born with plus what we do with ourselves during the years after that momentous event. No one is a finished masterpiece right out of the chute. We take a combination of a lot of tender loving care and kicks in the rear end to get us from the start to finish lines with something to show for ourselves. We all have our own paths to follow. Yours may not include a hike across Spain, France, and Italy as mine did and at this point only God knows why. The long stretch of days where my only responsibility was to get myself from one town to another allowed for a lot of thinking and feeling time. Thinking I’m good at, feeling, not so much. And that’s one good reason for making a pilgrimage—the time spent with yourself from wherever you start to wherever you finish is time unlike you can find anywhere else under any other circumstances.

A pilgrimage, a walking pilgrimage, is not so much about searching for something—expiation of sins, a higher truth, a closer relationship with God, feeling closer to your essence, or whatever your end goal—as simply allowing or even forcing yourself to experience time and everything that gets squeezed into it while you’re on the path. The experiences of boredom alternating with exhilaration, of frustration with peace, of exhaustion with unbound energy are all good on a pilgrimage. No matter what else happens, time passes, distance falls behind you, and eventually, if you just keep walking, your destination appears before you.

On a walking pilgrimage, our inner self expands outward and becomes part of the world around us. We hear more, see more, smell more, taste more, and feel everything. Heat, cold, humidity, rain, dryness, light and colors, smells—good, bad, or indifferent—are constant companions. I don’t forget the times I was tired, lost, and frustrated in the extreme, not knowing which direction to go, but knowing that at least I was amidst western civilization and I couldn’t go far without running into a road that would take me somewhere. That happened more often than I care to remember, but I’m still here to write about it, so it couldn’t have been too bad.

Pilgrimage is about trust in yourself, in others, and more often than you’d believe if you’ve never had the experience, Divine Providence. There were many times when coincidence simply fell short of being able to explain the good things that happened. Some would argue with that, but it was my pilgrimage, so I get to make the rules and interpret the events.

The Path to Rome

The year is 990 AD. The Chinese Emperor Shengzong of the Liao Dynasty is twenty years old and an innovative dictionary, Longkan Shoujian, or The Handy Mirror of the Dragon Shrine is being compiled to aid the study of Buddhist scriptures. Abu Mansur Sabuktigin, founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty is keeping himself fairly occupied trying to expand his rule from northern India to parts of what are now Pakistan and Afghanistan. At about this time, Leif Eriksson and his crews are setting up camp in what will become known as Newfoundland. And Sigeric the Serious is beginning a long walk back to England from Rome after receiving his pallium, a symbol of the jurisdiction granted him by Pope John XV as Archbishop of Canterbury.

We don’t know why he was called The Serious, but epithets seemed to be pretty common in medieval times: We have King Alfonso VI, "the Brave of Leon and Castile, Richard I of Normandy, known as The Fearless," Philip the Handsome, King of Castile and husband of Juana la Loca, "The Crazy, William I of Orange, The Taciturn," and my personal favorite, Wilfrid the Hairy, who, one hundred years before our intrepid Sigeric the Serious began his stroll from Rome to southeastern England declared his fief free and independent from the crown of France, giving birth to a feeling of independence which continues to this day in that region of the Iberian peninsula known as Catalunya. We’ll come across Wilfrid the Hairy again in a few chapters, so remember his name. (How could you forget it?)

Sigeric’s Serious epithet may refer to the fact that he was well-educated or it could have been a transliteration of his name into Latin as Serio. Regardless, in my research I’ve yet to come across any mention of Sigeric’s sense of humor, or even that anyone ever saw him smile. As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but given his nickname and lack of even a hint in a well-documented journal of any jokes he might have told along the way from Rome to England, a trip that took him well over a year to make, I’m of the opinion that he was not the kind of guy you’d invite to your birthday party.

But a wuss he wasn’t. I can tell you from painful experience that the path to Rome, in the case of Sigeric, a journey of 1,100 miles is anything but easy. I don’t know what kind of retinue traveled with him, whether he carried a back pack, if his shoes had Vibram® soles (if they didn’t they should have) and if the bathrooms along the way were the stop-and-squat style that I’ll be telling you about later. But even if he had help carrying his kit and brought along a cordon bleu cook to make his dinner every night, this was still one rough trip: Up and down mountains, fording icy rivers, fighting off swarms of flies, getting lost with nary a soul around for miles of whom to ask directions, and that’s assuming you can speak the language. No, his was an adventure every step of the way.

In truth, it wasn’t Sigeric who blazed the trail; the Via Francigena (the French way) was old when he started down the path. The Romans some hundreds of years prior had established routes throughout their empire that stretched to southwestern Spain, England, and points east and south of the seat of their Empire. Some of the roads were actually paved—that would be with stones of course, but still much better than a muddy rut. But much of what was known as the Via Francigena, documented in a journal by Sigeric on his return trip from Rome, were constantly changing routes between monasteries closest to commercial centers that people commonly traveled. Pilgrims and traders were fortunate if their path coincided with one that might have been developed, but frequently there would not even be an established pathway, as routes changed depending on weather or commercial and political necessity.

Sigeric’s route comprised eighty stages averaging about twenty kilometers each. Because his journal is of a return trip from Rome to Canterbury, pilgrims to Rome walk the route in reverse.

Other pilgrims, but not me of course. I personally tend to look for any way possible to be different. When I walked the Camino de Santiago, I didn’t take the French Route like ninety percent of all other sojourners, beginning in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. No, I took what’s known as the little-used Catalan Route, beginning my journey at the Monastery at Montserrat near Barcelona. I don’t know why exactly; it just seemed a good place to start and I wanted a unique experience. (I could say that I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to start there, which would be the most honest answer, but then I’d have to elaborate on the whole spiritual issue and I’m not in the mood to discuss it just now.) For my pilgrimage to Rome, I thought it would be a cool idea to begin in Barcelona, first making my way to Montserrat again, then heading north to France, making my way around the Mediterranean Sea and then south through Italy to Rome. That way I would have walked the entire distance from the Atlantic Ocean in northwest Spain to Rome. My plan is to someday walk to Jerusalem from Rome, completing the three great pilgrimages of the Catholic Church on foot as much as possible. (You have to have a goal to keep you going through life.) I haven’t managed to get inspired by financial goals enough to do what’s required to live the American Dream; somewhere past mid-life I still don’t have a pot to urinate in (to clean up a tired old phrase), but planning to someday make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for now, helps me get out of bed in the morning.

My route took me from Barcelona, where you can actually find the start of one of the routes to Santiago, appropriately, at Plaça de Sant Jaume, or St. James Plaza. (Santiago means St. James.) I was able to find a guide on the internet in PDF format that took me through Catalunya to Montserrat and points beyond. I had used the route starting out in Montserrat two years prior when my destiny was Santiago de Compostela. This time, I would use the Camino from Barcelona as far as Montserrat, but then veer north through Catalunya to the French border, then on to Arles on a route using small roads I had planned over the course of a year or so using Google maps. From Arles I would follow a guide book, actually two guide books—one from Arles to Vercelli, Italy on the ancient Via Domitia; the second following the Via Francigena from Vercelli to Rome.

When you decide to make a pilgrimage you find that you’re not the first one who’s come up with the idea. In fact, for the three traditional pilgrimage destinations of the Catholic Church there are networks of routes all across Europe and the Middle East. The most well-known pilgrimage route, Santiago de Compostela, can be compared to the Amazon River with a network of tributaries originating from every part of Western and Eastern Europe. One of those routes begins in Rome and traverses the Via Francigena to Northern Italy where the pilgrim has a choice of two main branches that will take him through France to join with the French route of the Camino, then crossing the Pyrenees at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. One of these routes follows a southern path, skirting the Mediterranean Sea, the other exits the Via Francigena at Vercelli and crosses the French Alps at Montgenevre, runs southwest to Arles and then points westward, again joining the French Route of the Camino de Santiago at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. I took the latter, thinking that, while the more southern route would be much shorter, food and lodging along the route near the Mediterranean would be exorbitantly expensive. Unlike the Camino de Santiago, which, along the better-known routes in Spain is full of inexpensive albergues, hostels along the off-shoot of the Via Francigena through France, if they exist, are anything but inexpensive. You’re lucky to find youth hostels or other inexpensive lodging, and the price of food will break the bank if you’re not very careful. Unless you’re very wealthy, you should keep a piece or two of fruit, a baguette, and can of sardines in your pack at all times. Frequently I’d pass through towns where all businesses were either closed for the afternoon, or the only food in town would be in restaurants where the lunch special was fifteen to eighteen euros, or between twenty-one and twenty-six dollars given the exchange rate at the time I was making my pilgrimage. No, the average pilgrim on a budget either likes sardines, or will learn to like them.

My path: Barcelona to Rome

1 - from Barcelona to Rubi (San Cugat)

2 - Rubí to an abandoned house

3 - Abandoned house to Monistrol (Montserrat)

4 - Monistrol to Manressa

5 - Manresa to Moiá

6 - Moiá to Vic

7 - Vic to L’Esquirol/Santa Maria de Corco

8 - L’Esquirol to Sant Esteve d’en Bas

9 - Sant Esteve d’en Bas to Banyoles

10 - Banyoles to Sant Ferriol

11 - Sant Ferriol to