Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door

CAMINO FRANCÉS – Day 31: Friday 9 May 2025 – ARZÚA to PEDROUZO (21 [+2] kilometres)

An odd thing happens when there are greater numbers of people on the trail – one ends up speaking to fewer folk, not more. In the early days and weeks of this trek I felt aligned with most of those walking the same path; the length of the journey ahead and the shared common purpose meant that it was difficult to pass someone on the trail, or to be passed, without some interaction – be it a heartfelt ‘Buen Camino’, or a conversation that was to develop over several kilometres. I had a sense then that I had either got to know most of the other walkers or, at the very least, that we recognised each other from earlier days. With the masses that have joined the Camino since Sarria and, particularly since the Caminos del Norte and Primitivo joined the Francés trail yesterday, that is certainly no longer the case. Most of the walkers now are strangers and there are far too many to get to know beyond a muttered greeting. Anonymity in a crowd.

I have done a little research into the numbers of walkers now participating in the Camino pilgrimages. According to the Spanish Pilgrim Office, during the last calendar year (2024) there were just under 440,000 registered pilgrims converging on Santiago from various directions, and about half of these came via the Camino Francés. Most of these start their walk at Sarria: the figure for those walking from St Jean Pied de Port in France, on the walk that I have almost completed, was just over 33,000 last year, so 7.5% of the total. Pilgrim numbers have been climbing steadily and have roughly trebled in the last fifteen years, back towards the numbers believed to have walked the various routes in the Middle Ages. And for the first time, at least in recent years, female pilgrims (53%) now outnumber males. In terms of nationality, around a half are from Spain, with Italy, the US, Germany, Portugal, France, and then the UK, next in line (although empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of South Koreans has massively increased in the last year or two, apparently due to celebrity endorsement of the Camino). Anyway, here are my photos of today’s shorter ramble.

Appropriately I had dinner tonight in the town with Niall, from Washington DC, who I met on the night before we set off from St Jean in south-west France, and it seemed strange to now be contemplating the final walking day of our Camino adventure. Looking at the forecast we may have a wet day as our finale, but with a following wind, or otherwise, I hope to be reporting back in a day’s time as we reach our ultimate destination.

In choosing ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ as my Blog heading today, I am slightly realigning the sense of the phrase that Bob Dylan penned (or, at least, I hope so)! My use of the words reflects my feeling of ‘almost there’ as far as the Camino is concerned, whereas Dylan wrote the song of that title for the 1973 film ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’, specifically for the scene in which the frontier lawman is about to face his maker. The song itself was released as a single two months after the film premiered, and became a worldwide hit and one of Dylan’s most covered and most recognised post-1960s numbers. In the words of his biographer Clinton Heylin, the song is ‘an exercise in splendid simplicity’.