Cee to the Finisterre lighthouse and back to Finisterre town  – 19.2km, 5.25 hours, Thursday, 3 October

The Romans believed that this little fishing village was as far as the world existed to the west so they named it Finisterre – “The end of the world”.  It is also referred to locally Fisterra.  For us, it is just the end.  

We have walked nine pilgrimages over the past 12 years with five of them ending in Santiago de Compostela.  Many pilgrims in the Middle Ages continued their Camino after Santiago all the way to Finisterre, often because, in Santiago, they were closer to the ocean than they had ever been so they might as well see what it looks like.  We just wanted to reach the end of the world. 

The trail today was blessedly short.  Sometimes, the short days are the toughest mentally. We underestimate the work needed to complete the shorter mileage. That wasn’t the case today because Finisterre was our goal.  The weather was also perfect for walking as it was overcast and slightly chilly. Fog was the only drawback.  It also helped out that the trail was mostly either downhill or flat. The biggest hills were only a fairly steep 100m climb out of Cee to San Roque and the 150m climb after the town of Finisterre up to the lighthouse and the 0.000km distance marker.  We actually walked through Finisterre and our hotel to get to the climb along the side of Mount San Guillermo to get to the lighthouse where our walk ends – well, sort of.  We still had to walk 3km back to town.   

Before that last climb though, we stopped for a simple lunch of a chicken bocadillo (almost like a sub) for me and an avocado on toast for Melanie.  I forgot to take photos but I’ve been trying to draw what they looked like from memory and I’ll post that later for our foodie followers. 

As we walked up that hill, we cheerily greeted the pilgrims coming down but we really cheered for every tourist bus that was coming down because it meant there would be about 60 less tourists to gawk at the pilgrims. At least six busses came down and none went up during that last 50 minutes from town. There was still one or two busses there when we arrived though and someone did take our photo and ask us where we walked from.  The funny thing was that the woman first asked that question of another woman that Melanie was helping by taking a photo of her with the sea in the background. The funny part was the woman replied “I came from the same bus you were on and we just walked from the parking lot.”

Before reaching Finisterre (this blog jumps around a lot!), we walked onto a beach to dip our toes (our shoe’s toes) into the bay because we knew we weren’t going to be climbing down the rocks near the lighthouse to do it.  It was more symbolic than anything else. The 0.000km distance marker next to the lighthouse was our end point.

When at the lighthouse, we saw many pilgrims sitting alone, just collecting their thoughts after several weeks or several months of a daily walking routine.  Quite a number of them were crying.  They may have been crying tears of joy for completing their Camino, tears of sorrow for not being able to walk further, tears of acceptance that maybe they answered some important question they contemplated along the way, tears of pain of the memory of someone they walked for who they had lost, or maybe it was just tears of pain because they just stubbed their toe.  Who knows?  The only thing I know is that I wanted to go up to each of them and just put a hand on their shoulder to give them support.  But for many of them, they needed to go through the process alone. It’s the final steps of the Camino after the walking steps are complete.

So that’s it folks.  Another Camino checked off. We’ll spend a little while longer in Europe as tourists but then we have to hurry back to Singapore to do our annual medical exam. We won’t do this for at least another year so we need to impress the doctor now!

Peace and love to you all.  Your kind words and encouragement mean so much to us.  While we walk up the sides of mountains, with rivers of rainwater slosh over our shoe tops, we know that many hands are helping support us and urge us onward.  We are very grateful.

George and Leo, we will see you guys soon. We have lots of stories for you two.