In The Lord of the Rings Bilbo on his return in The Hobbit, Frodo on his journey, and finally Bilbo when the mission has been completed, either sing or recite versions of the following verse:

“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can”

To top that off when I manage to sweep Bilbo and Frodo out of my head, The Road Less Travelled, by American Poet Robert Frost comes a-calling. I do not claim to know either off by heart. However, both somehow reflect the excitement and adrenaline rush of travel. Frost’s poem would need to be reverse engineered to describe the Camino de Santiago. Instead of two roads diverging the Camino is a great number of roads, routes, and ways all converging on Santiago de Compostela. 

They are all roads of human stories. Dating back over centuries and offering the new pilgrim a chance to explore the wonders of the North of Spain, and, in the case of some of the roads less travelled, an insight into the Spain I came to back in the 80s.

Everybody is familiar with the French Way, or French Camino. It is the most popular and passes through my beloved León where I lived for over twenty-eight years. Our northern neighbours from Asturias gave us the first recorded pilgrimage to Compostela, when Alphonse II, the Chaste, set out a few years after the Traslatio once the Apostle’s remains had been settled. Legend has it that the Asturians scoffed at the French tourists treading their way via Burgos and León, while they had so many important relics, including the Holy Shroud, not the fake in Turin and a Cathedral dedicated to the Holy Saviour. They say that by the twelfth century the following saying had become popular: 

“Quien va a Santiago y no al Salvador, visita al lacayo, pero no a su Señor.”

“Whoever goes to Santiago and not to the “Saviour”, goes to the servant and not to His Lord.”

While the merit may lie at the feet of Alphonse II, the Chaste, I much prefer the other version.

There are so many Caminos. Some less travelled. But they all offer the chance to deal with your thoughts, whether religious or not.