I am revisiting my pictures from my long ~1800 km (1120 miles) walk from my home, in Paris, to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest corner of Spain.

At the time, I couldn’t take the whole ~72 days, needed to walk the entire trip, off in one go, but I still had my French-social-system ^TM powered multiple weeks of holiday per year to use. So, I completed it in segments of ~300 km over ~12 days at ~25km/day across 5 years (with COVID in the middle).

The thing about starting from your home is that it is incredibly liberating. All you have to do is put your backpack on your shoulders, cross the threshold of your house, and boom, the adventure has started. No need to stress about booking tickets or missing a departure. You decide when and how you move. This feeling of freedom is the essence of the way for me.

At the same time, you do not feel lost ^{(it does happen sometimes)} nor aimless, because you have one goal, to get to Compostela, and signs to follow along the many possible roads.

Santiago is Saint-Jacques in French, Saint-James in English. We have a Saint-Jacques tower in the middle of Paris, the last remnant (destroyed during the Revolution and rebuilt in the 1850’) of a 16th-century church. It is a traditional start for Parisian pilgrims, along with Notre-Dame de Paris. It is the top picture of this post.

On this first day, I already had to make a big choice between two routes: going through Orléans or through Chartres. I chose the more historically significant city of Orléans.

The scallop shells, the symbol of the way, sometimes seen nailed to the sidewalk of big cities.

The way I have picked from Paris is the way going through Tours. It is a very old way, even older than the Compostela pilgrimage (9th century) in some parts, so it has a Latin name, “via Turonensis”.

The train station of Massy, last stop for the day, sleeping at friends.