Villafranca del Bierzo – Barbadelo 81km

Today we crossed the last mountain range of the route. During the day we followed many serpentine roads. Suunto t6 on my wrist tells me: ascent 1497m, descent 1413m, high point 1350m, low point 431m. Along the way I meet lots of interesting persons.

Pilgrims of today probably differ quite a lot from their early ‘role models’. Only very few people spend more than a month on their hike: a weeklong hike of a couple of hundred kilometers seems adequate as a soul cleansing ritual. It also seems very popular that you walk the classic French road in three parts in three successive/consecutive years. In the last couple of years, mountain bikers have also joined the hikers, who think that the 800km long trail from the French border to Santiago de Compostela is a suitable project for a week. The bishop’s office of Santiago keeps record of the pilgrims. Surprisingly the biggest age group is 21-30, and the sex ratio is 50-50, so it’s not just a hobby for ‘old-timers’.

In 2004, there were about 180 000 registered hikers arriving to Santiago, so maybe we could start calling this some kind of ‘mass tourism’?