Saint James at Yahoo and GoCamino
I have joined these two because it seems that whenever a member posts on either one, they copy the other as well.
The Saint James at Yahoo Group was started on Sat Feb 20, 1999 at 4:52 am.
Since then there have been 5085 posts.
Grant Spangler posted a link to an interesting article about el camino wherein a farmer who converted his cowshed into an albergue was interviewed. He used to have 30 cows but he could now sleep 45 pilgrims in the converted stable, "It's more profitable and more satisfying to engage in this work than in the dairy sector," said Angelo, the owner. Peregrino cattle? asked a member.
In the same article, someone said, The Camino is a bomb that's going to explode". Maybe, maybe not.
Acacio Paz – a former long-haired, beaded, beatnik and now proud albergue owner - responded to a query about whether a donation from Brasil had been used to improve the buildings at Manjarin.
“I inform of that Coelho helped Takes by Manjarin with 8.000 kg of firewood so that all only travelling and Takes could pass the 2007 winter. This year we go to speak with Coelho so that it the same repeats gesture of affection and all to peregrinos of winter.” Cool Coelho keeps camino catholics warm!!
Seems Paz was the subject of a hacker who used his email to advertise a commercial website on the St James Group.
Acacio – Spamerifico was the subject of the post and the man sent an apology.
Sorry my friends. This is my big problem actual. I have outlook but same times another use my e.mail. file. Sorry, please delete when see this mensages. Thanks so lot to pelerin Acacio
Grant also posted a link to a YouTube video of the St James Day fireworks in
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=iCb6lH1uFm8
But, Rosina Lila advised that the 2008 fireworks might be the last:
I can only tell you that the "burning of the Cathedral" is grand..... and then some. I don't know the origins of this extraordinary feat.... or its purpose. Yet, in a way, I'm glad, and fortunate, that it appears that this year, 2008, will be the last one with such extravagantly lavish display of fireworks, rockets, flares, lasers, colored shooting-up electrical fountains, real flames and such, that go on for an incredible sixty minutes..... From eleven o'clock p.m. on the 24th of July to midnight. It appears that concerned archeological and cultural-historical heads have managed to prevail over public oooohs and aaaaahs to convince the powers that be of the inevitability of consequential damage to the structural essence of the Santiago Cathedral and its treasures.
Oh well … that’s a sight many peregrinos won’t get to see.
www.caminosantiago.com forum - 26 new posts in 3 weeks.
The one with the most views (284) was entitled "I am wondering". Enigmatic, what?
Now I'm sure it was because everybody was 'wondering" wtf is this post all about but it received not only the aforementioned 284 views, but 3 replies. Want to know what it was about? Go to: http://www.caminosantiago.com/way_of_saint_james/pilgrims_forum.htm
and the one with the most replies was - well it was a tie - "Trekking Poles" and "Crowds on the Camino" each drew 8 replies.
..... and my favorite for ambiguity "We are not now that strength which in olden days moved earth and heaven..."
This from a dude who has a ticket to Biarritz but .."..my 'plan B' is to make a note of points along the Camino where I could get transport to Santiago and rest up there for a few days. I'd then get the bus out to Sarria and walk back to Santiago from there. Can anyone suggest a few places along the Camino where transport to Santiago is easily available?"
Gees - what was Plan A?? Why not get a ticket to Santiago and rest up, full stop?
I've discovered that we have a Javier from Pamplona and a Javier from Madrid.Javier from Pamplona is the one who posts photographs on the Forums.
Javier from Madrid posts information and advice.
Javier from Pamplona posted this photograph of the solstice sun shining on the Apse of the church in St Juan de Ortega.
On March 21 and September 21 at 17:07 (solar time) a ray of light enters through a small window and goes all illuminating scenes of Christmas for 10 minutes ending the solar beam at the centre of the apse the church".
Arturo Murias from the Godesalco.com website posted a message about GPS tracking on his website.
If you need so, Google Earth files can be easily converted into GPS files (choose GPX format as a first option, which is the most comprehensive at reflecting the GE files data) with a software called "GPS Babel". You might need to extract an xml file from the GE file if this is a kmz and not a kml. And to do this you might have to change the ".kmz" extension to ".zip". And to do this you might need to make the "known extensions" visible in your Windows... But it's really straightforward.
Be aware that a GE file, as it's the case of those generated in my website, might contain more (or many more) of the 10,000 trackpoints allowed by many GPS receivers. My personal opinion is that you don't really need any GPS to follow the Routes to Santiago that I know (Francés, Plata, Podiensis, Tolosana) as they are really well waymarked. I would just select the sections that you might hear that pose a problem for walkers due to aged or poor waymarking."So - there you have it - really straightforward.
All you have to do to convert a GPS to a GPX is extract an xml from a GE if it is kmz and not a kml and change it to zip.
A load of GPS Babel to me senor Murias.
SANTIAGOBIS
What is going on with Santiagobis? 30 new posts in August.
I'm sure a statistician would make interesting assumptions from the message history:
Message History
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 221 | 163 | 252 | 120 | 120 | 75 | 170 | 30 | ||||
| 2007 | 264 | 361 | 399 | 406 | 319 | 316 | 212 | 306 | 173 | 183 | 148 | 75 |
| 2006 | 363 | 262 | 320 | 268 | 410 | 280 | 268 | 281 | 204 | 149 | 257 | 145 |
| 2005 | 258 | 206 | 242 | 223 | 213 | 183 | 228 | 205 | 202 | 156 | 167 | 218 |
| 2004 | 211 | 390 | 351 | 223 | 246 | 425 | 232 | 263 | 206 | 264 | 188 | 235 |
| 2003 | 417 | 740 | 676 | 438 | 349 | 376 | 233 | 132 | 125 | 189 | 359 | 175 |
| 2002 | 229 | 173 | 216 | 196 | 275 | 171 | 114 | 125 | 177 | 177 | 249 | 104 |
| 2001 | 427 | 328 | 196 | 372 | 292 | 190 | 319 | 301 | 264 | 230 | 278 | 130 |
| 2000 | 120 | 178 | 116 |
This year:
January 221 - lowest number in January since 204 (a Holy Year):
February 163 - lowest number ever in February
March 252 - Lowest in March since 2005:
April120 - 3rd lowest for all months since 2001:
May 120 - same low number:
June 75 - the lowest number posted ever - since the inception of the group:
July170 - second lowest July posts since 2002:
All of this makes one think that perhaps pilgrims are learning to search through the files for the information they need - or, that they have moved on to another forum.
The post with the most responses was one on the merits of ultralight backpacks - some were for, some were against - the usual to-ing and fro-ing - which must have left the original poster none the wiser about what to purchase!
A post about a pilgrim who put on weight after her pilgrimage elicited a number of replies about metabolism and water retention - riveting stuff!
The Forum that wins the Bouquet for the most posts- and the most interesting posts- once again is the Pilgrimage-to Santiago Forum.A bit more constructive camino posting on this forum with important things like bed bugs, snoring, no-room-at-the-inn, and vegetarian food - interspersed with the odd oddity like – using a sun compass, a Baby Jumping Festival near Burgos and a 2,100 word dissertation (I’m not kidding!) entitled King's companions -1- George Edmund Street: WTF???
Bed bugs had 806 views and 18 responses:
Snoring 627 views and 18 replies:
Crowding 698 views and 12 replies:
Vegetarian food – 557 views and 13 posts:
King's companions
What can one say – its all been said!
Solutions? Rosemary, operation deep freeze, tumble dry or nuke them in a microwave. With or without the pilgrim? Not sure.
Snoring: The cacophony of sonorous serenades plagues every albergue more than the little beddy-bug critters do.
Solutions: Whistling, clapping your hands, drinking lots of vino tinto with your meal or stoning.
One (ex-hospitalero) commented: “Short of stoning the snorers, Earplugs are the only practical answer…”
Take that you snoring sod!!
Picture the scene: A group of nose-strapped, vino tintoed pilgrims with silicone ear plugs, whistling and clapping, throwing stones in the dark from their top bunks! Yeee-Haaa!!
And then…..(drum roll)….. Breathe-Rite Strips - available in large farmacias in
A testimony from a user: “… they consist of an adhesive strip that you fix crosswise to your nose. The object is to open up the airways and therefore reduce snoring. According to my wife - who has spent many nights listening to my snoring, this product is quite effective and reduced my normal nocturnal roar to a soft purr (even after a few glasses of Rioja).”
(No wonder he was purring… he was lying next to his wife. Most of us have to sleep check by jowl with a stinking, snoring, bedbug infested, vegetarian sumai wrestler from the former
There have been a number of posts on overcrowding including one from a blog where a pilgrim wrote, “The Camino is no longer a game. Suddenly the road is glutted with people who have just begun, and albergues fill up by 10am. Those left over are left to fend for themselves like dogs fighting for a scrap of meat in a cage. I’ve been warned not to let the final stages of my Camino disintegrate into a mad, pre-dawn dash for beds, but it’s a nerve-wracking thing now, wondering how far you can make it before it’s too late to get a bed.” She wrote in a later post that she slept on the floor in overflow accommodation for three nights near the end of her walk, in a person’s garage in Triacastela because ALL the albergues, hotels, fondas etc were full: with 200 other pilgrims in a gymnasium in Melide and a sports hall in Pedrouzo.
The moral of this story?
DO NOT WALK IN AUGUST.
The whole of frigging
Ho-hum...... another new book has been published, by a Canadian writer. OMG - I can just imagine the gist of it now:
“I started at St Jean, climbed over a difficult mountain, walked 800km in sun, mist and rain, got blisters, shin splints and sunburn: slept in dormitories crammed with snoring pilgrims: ate bocadillos and drank cheap wine: I didn’t look at any churches or attend mass because I am not a religious person but I loved all the old buildings; met Carlos from Brazil, Tom from the US, Ching-chang from China and we will be lifelong email buddies for ever after. I am now a different, born again, deeply spiritual person. The end.
PS: If you want to know anything about walking the camino, just ask me because I am now a camino guru. YECH!!
Not much on bugs, beds or boots on this forum yet. Most posts are about guides, maps and routes.
Alfred L. C. van Amelsvoort - aka Fred - is back on the Via after a an interruption in Switzerland.
Dr. Franz-Xaver Brock (smart names these VF pilgrims) mentioned maps he used to get to Rome.The map: La Via Francigena - Cartografia e Gps issued by Monica D'Atti and Franco Cinti was a great help.
And one not to use - The OUTDOOR booklet "Via Francigena" from Birgit Götzmann (in German) could be helpful, but she often mixes up right and left and east and west so I sometimes went wrong following her instructions.
I'm not bloody surprised Dr Brock!
He also said: I met some persons who were just marking the way by painting arrows. As the VF can be used in both directions: for going to Rome as well as
for going to Santiago they painted the direction to Rome in white and the other direction in yellow.Interesting! flechas blancas a Roma - flechas amarilla a Santiago
On the other hand, it might be a ruse to get all of those crowd weary camino pilgrims who are crossing over to follow the yellow arrows again and leave the Via to Rome uncrowded!
The CPR (nah...nothing to do with mouth to mouth) are now "Friends of the AEVF".
"Sounds Good!" says Ed "But what exactly does it mean?"
"I do not know!" replies honest William, "But in the spirit of cooperation between pilgrim groups
it seemed like the right thing to do."
Other news:
Hiking in Switzerland, the main Swiss walking site, has recently been completely revamped, and the VF is now included both as one of the 2 international routes (the other is the ViaJacobi) and as no 70 of the regional routeshttp://www.wanderland.ch/en/routen_detail.cfm?id=284505
Includes an overview of each section, height profiles, and links to the detailed Swisstopo mapping. The official length is 215km from Ste-Croix to the GSB.
Fidenza-Lucca - There is a detailed guide, what they call 'un road-book' split into 10 leaflets which you can download for free, with maps and detailed description (in Italian).
http://turismo.parma.it/page.asp?IDCategoria=265&IDSezione=1109&ID=144876
Gruppo dei Dodici are working on a guide to the route they've developed from Formia to Rome, based on the Via Appia Antica and dubbed the Via Appia Pedemontana.http://www.romaefrancigena.eu/
And while on the GdD - they sent out an invitation to Walk to Rome - May 2009 - a yearly walk from Formia organised by Alberto Alberti and the Gruppo dei Dodici.
CamminaFrancigena - They're now setting up detailed maps/guides for Pavia-Rome with their GPS route overlaid on Google Maps. Includes downloadable pdf guides with description, height profile and detailed mapping, plus downloads of route in gpx and Google Earth formats. Only some sections are available at present, but as they only completed their walk last week that's not really surprising ;-)
http://www.itineraria.eu/wp-content/gpx-viewer.php?gpxfile=http://www.itineraria\
.eu/wp-content/uploads/francigena/gpx/Francige_index0.xml
or you can zoom to the 3 sections by substituting 1 2 or 3 for the 0 in that url. There's also blogs and photos on their site http://www.itineraria.eu/
Aftermath of WYD:
About 20 Catholic pilgrims, in Australia since the July visit of Pope Benedict XVI, have applied for asylum, a refugee support group said.
Experts say more visitors are expected to seek asylum as their visas, many of them valid for three months, expire. Applicants were mainly from African countries, including Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Burundi, Kenya as well as from Pakistan
More than 100,000 pilgrims attended World Youth Day led by the Pope.
"At this stage we've had about 20 people present to us as identified pilgrims indicating they're needing to seek protection in Australia," Ms Domicelj told reporters. "It might well be that at the end of those three months we see a spike in applications for protection," Ms Domicelj said "We are seeing utter destitution, we see malnutrition, we are seeing depression, we see homelessness. People are coming to us from a place of crisis."
Perilous Pilgrimages:Hundreds of pilgrims around the world have died in various accidents so far this month.
India - Nearly 150 pilgrims, many of them children, were trampled to death at a Hindu temple in northern India on Sunday, after rumors of a landslide set off a stampede, local officials said.
Kota (Rajasthan - Fourteen people were rescued from the Gaiparnath Mahadev temple where 135 pilgrims were trapped when the ladder leading to the ancient shrine collapsed. The cantilever type of ladder, supported from one end, collapsed yesterday due to heavy rush of pilgrims, official sources said today.
Texas USA - At least 14 people died and 40 people were injured when a charter bus carrying a Vietnamese Catholic group to an annual pilgrimage slammed onto its side and then skidded off a freeway overpass in Texas early on Friday.
Baghdad - three women blew themselves up in quick succession as Shia pilgrims entered the capital for a major religious event, killing at least 32 people and wounding more than 100.
MADINA: Number of Pakistan Hajj pilgrims who died in Saudi Arabia this year reached 198 when a lady was killed in a bus accident.
Sri Lanka - At least 18 persons, mostly women, were killed and 51 were injured today, when a powerful explosion triggered by suspected LTTE rebels ripped through a bus packed with Buddhist pilgrims in a central Sri Lankan town.
RIP.
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