Off Track: Viana do Costelo - Caminha

Well, I’m still a tourist.

It’s a 17-mile trek from Viana do Costello to the tiny town of Marinhas. I’ve pre-booked two rest days at a swanky spot in nearby Vilar de Mouros. I don’t really need them considering I haven’t walked for a few days. But I’ve pre-booked the entire trip. Im tied to the schedule. Besides, the foot still hurts.

Part of me wanted to walk some of the distance today. Then I considered that I’d have to find the train, get a ticket, decide where to exit and start walking, and finally find the Camino. I can’t decide if it was laziness or good sense that put me on the train the entire 17 miles, but I wasn’t the only tourist today.

Of the 25 or so commuters waiting on Platform 1 for a half hour ride, seven were pilgrims. Three of us were suffering with foot problems. One of the stark revelations of the Camino is that your whole body above your ankles can be Schwarzenegger tough, but your feet are big fat babies.

On the platform, I struck up a conversation with a fellow sufferer, Lucie, and her husband Miles. The Czechslovakian couple were celebrating their 11th anniversary. Lucie, who had switched shoes at the last moment pre-Camino, had blisters on the bottoms of both feet. Ouch!

The three of us visited the Caminha pharmacy for foot fixin’s when we arrived, then had lunch together in the sweet city square. They told me they had met camping and showed me their custom wedding invitation. They were carrying a lot of memorabilia in their pack. Miles, a former police detective who took early retirement after 30 years, had a journal. On one page, he collects stickers from bananas. Detective Miles and the Case Of the Sticky Fruit!

They also had a newspaper from the day they arrived in Porto. This was their 11th anniversary memento. On their first anniversary, they decided his gift to her would be a newspaper from the subway station in some place they would explore. They’ve done it every year since, except 2020.

I was utterly charmed by these two. There is, however, a moment with some pilgrims when you know it’s time to part ways. So we said goodbye and off I went to explore the tiny village. There was a church, of course. There were quaint alleys, but also a busy highway along the Minho River. I stumbled across the library, but despite three turns around the block couldn’t find the door. Blasphemy!

Next to La Bibiblioteca I visited the tiny Museu Municipal de Caminha, where I ran into Mary again. Behind a velvet curtain upstairs, with mood lighting and piped in monastic chanting, I found Nossa Senhora das Doras - Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. Statues of this version of Mary, stabbed through the heart with seven swords outnumbered those of her son during the crucifixion. They were beautiful, sad, and disturbing, The docent downstairs used Google translate to explain that the elder people in the community loved this particular iteration of The Virgin Mother.

Why?

Maybe they felt some connection with her sorrows, or felt that this pained virgin could somehow, with prayer and offerings, carry theirs. I don’t know, but it got me wondering what happened to Mary after her son was murdered. Where did she go? How did she recover from her grief, or did she?

I don’t recall seeing any stories about Mary after the resurrection, so I looked it up. It’s not in the Bible, but Christian’s believe Mary spent her days in Ephesus with the Apostle John. Jesus asked John to look after her…while he was dying on the cross.

I’ll bet there are pages and pages of post-ascension Mary stories in the catacombs under the Vatican. Too bad. I bet Mary had a lot to teach us about grief and recovery.

I hope, for her sake, mine, and well, everyone’s, that she would have pulled those damn sword out.Read more