Hay Forum - the Camino Santiago de Compostela

 This is the first time I've made it to one of the Hay Forums, and I had a very enjoyable time.  (The cost was £5 on the door.)

The format was a main talk, with musical interludes and shorter talks, in this case about the famous pilgrimage route the Camino Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain, 800km of mountainous terrain, but with places to stay for the pilgrims scattered along the route very close together, so the walkers or cyclists could travel for as long or as short a distance in a day as they felt comfortable with.

We started with Father Richard playing a short piece on the organ, about the Lord calling Elijah.

Then Pete and Mia started their talk.  Pete cycled the Camino, because he wasn't able to take too long away from his work to do it - it took him about two weeks.  He decided to make the trip because he'd seen a film that included the cathedral at Compostela, with the giant swinging thurible!  Later he showed a short film of the thurible being used during a service, trailing clouds of incense and swinging right up to the roof!  There's a man who has the job of jumping out to catch the chains to stop it swinging.

Mia had no fixed time to walk the route, as she'd just finished University, and was using the time to figure out what she wanted to do next.  She had some awful weather towards the end of the journey, but everyone in her photos - and she had a short video, too - seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Both of them had started off alone, but as Pete said, you tend to meet up with the same group of people for the communal meals in the evenings, because you're all going at about the same pace, and by the end of his trip he was sitting down to dinner with 14 friends.  He also arrived in one town on the day of the annual running of the bulls, where the young men either bopped the noses of the bulls and then ran off to dive behind a protective screen, or had to throw something over the bulls' horns. 

There was music from Father Richard on the organ accompanying Terry singing a version of Ave Maria (I think it was Russian?).  It wasn't hard to learn the words, as it was just Ave Maria repeated throughout.

Then Christina talked about what Christmas was like in her Polish household as a child, and sang one of the carols the family used to sing round the Christmas tree, with guitar accompaniment.  She'd dressed for the occasion, too, in an embroidered blouse and waistcoat, and floral head dress with ribbons.

After the videos, Father Richard said a few words about pilgrimage, and mentioned a time when he was a young priest in Cardiff, visiting a school once a week.  He managed to track down one of the children, now an adult, who told him that he couldn't remember the thought provoking questions he asked, but he did remember that all the children loved Father Richard.

I was sitting next to a lady who grew up in South Africa, and she told me that a priest had visited her school when she was a child, too.  "His name was Father Tutu, and he went on to be quite famous!  And we all loved him, too."

Then Lucy from Hay Madrigals sang a piece from the Messiah (which will be performed in St Mary's later this month) with Father Richard this time accompanying her on the piano, and finally he went back to the organ so the whole congregation could sing O Come All Ye Faithful.

And then there were mince pies to take home.