Latest / WCBH / Day 1 Camino Frances: From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Valcarlos

Transcript

Day 1 Camino Frances: From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Valcarlos · WCBH

• 0:25
  Hey, it's Cam from WCBH. Now, normally when you hear me, I'm talking about local
• 0:30
  Darwin sport or commentating, local Darwin rugby league or rugby union,
• 0:34
  but I'm coming to you with a different series of podcasts.
• 0:39
  My family and I are walking the Camino Frances.
• 0:43
  So we're walking from St. John Pier de Porte through to Santiago de Compostela.
• 0:50
  That's 790 kilometers.
• 0:53
  And we started today. Today is day one and so we've made it to our first day
• 0:59
  destination being Valcarlos.
• 1:01
  We walked a little over 13 kilometers today.
• 1:05
  Doesn't sound like a huge first day and that was intentionally so.
• 1:09
  So we didn't break our bodies. Of course, carrying our packs,
• 1:12
  that's heavy and we've got to get used to that.
• 1:15
  But the elevation, there was a fair amount of elevation on
• 1:18
  day one particularly in the back end as you
• 1:21
  come into Val Carlos it was it was exceptionally steep
• 1:24
  there so a good day but we've made
• 1:27
  it here on day one now many people would be familiar with the Camino Francis
• 1:33
  or The Way or Walking the Camino etc it was made famous recently by Martin Sheen
• 1:40
  when he released the film well he started the film The Way I think it might
• 1:44
  have been his son Emilio Estevez,
• 1:46
  who directed the film.
• 1:48
  So if you haven't seen it, it's a great film, The Way, starring Martin Sheen.
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  And it's a journey about heading towards a town called Santiago de Compostela.
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  And what it's famous for is there's a cathedral there, St.
• 2:03
  James, and it holds the remains of St. James.
• 2:07
  And it's believed that during the Crusades, the remains of St.
• 2:12
  James was taken out of Jerusalem and taken to Santiago. And that's where it's
• 2:18
  kept now in the crypt there at St.
• 2:20
  James. And so over the years, over thousands of years, really,
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  this has developed into a place of pilgrimage where people journey to Santiago.
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  And there's a number of different caminos now.
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  But the French way or the way that we're walking, it would be considered the most famous.
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  So 790 kilometers now. It's broken up over 33 stages.
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  So that's sort of a rough number
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  of days people take to do the distance if
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  you add in a few rest days possibly about 35 days
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  obviously people can do it quicker than
• 2:57
  that and many people do our intent is to actually take longer we'll probably
• 3:04
  take about the 45 days walking the Camino is myself my wife and my son he's
• 3:10
  eight years old we've got plenty of time up our sleeve So we don't want to break
• 3:14
  our bodies. My son is young.
• 3:16
  My wife and I, we want to look after ourselves. My back and my knee's not so good.
• 3:21
  So we are taking a little bit more time. So for example, stage one,
• 3:25
  we're breaking into two days.
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  Now some days we'll do that and other days we'll make the stage.
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  So we started this morning from St. John, Pied de Porte.
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  It's a small, quaint little town in the south of France, the traditional starting
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  point, and you attend the office and you're given your passport or credential.
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  And what that is, is a little booklet as you work your way through from cafe
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  to restaurant to accommodation to town, et cetera, you collect stamps along
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  the way as a memento, but also as evidence that you've walked this journey.
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  And when you get to the end, you present it at the other passport office in
• 4:07
  Santiago, and then they issue you with a certificate called a Compostela,
• 4:12
  a sign of your achievement of walking the distance.
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  Now, you don't have to walk the 790 kilometers.
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  My wife and I, we walked the last five days in the back end of 2017 over that
• 4:25
  Christmas New Year period, and that was from Saria to Santiago.
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  That gave us an insight into what we could expect.
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  We made plenty of mistakes then. Hopefully, we don't make them a second time
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  on this Camino, but we are bound to make plenty more mistakes.
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  Now, we are no means experts.
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  We're, in fact, at the complete other end of the spectrum to that absolute...
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  Put us down the novice end. But we have done a little bit of prep.
• 4:52
  We'll talk more about what prep we've done as we release these podcasts.
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  So that's what this series will be about.
• 5:02
  So it will feature in the WCBH podcast list, but I'll identify it.
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  Camino Francis Day One, from here to there, et cetera.
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  So if you're more interested in just listening to the local Darwin sports podcast,
• 5:15
  you can give these ones a miss.
• 5:17
  But if you are interested in following us along this journey.
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  You're very, very welcome.
• 5:22
  So we're at the end of day one.
• 5:24
  Hopefully you join us for day two.
• 5:27
  Tomorrow we will head from Valcarlos and we will head to Ronson Valas.
• 5:33
  And just a real rider, I suppose. I'm absolutely going to butcher the French
• 5:38
  and the Spanish throughout this podcast series.
• 5:40
  I hope I get better as we go along.
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  But for me, we're going to enjoy this little town.
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  It's a Pyrenean town, small town of Val Carlos.
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  It's part of the Basque country.
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  It's beautiful here. It is winter. It is the last day of February.
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  So it's quite cool, quite cold at times.
• 6:00
  When the sun's out, it does warm up a little bit. But bye from me for today
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  and we'll see you hopefully on day two.