Puente la Reina is the point where several Pyrenean routes on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela meet. This 'confluence of paths' is now marked with a statue of a pilgrim. However, it is the elegance of the six-span, 11th Century bridge across the Arga River that takes the breath away. A short distance away is a beautiful Romanesque Church at Eunate. Its architecture is characteristic of so many churches on the 'Camino' (Spanish for 'way') but it is small and intimate and its octagonal cloisters make it strikingly distinctive. The external cobbled walkway induces a sense of tranquillity while the interior is filled with the scent of simple white lilies.
We visited both on our pilgrimage. There is an enormous sense of connection with the past in these locations. When we crossed the bridge it was extraordinary to think that pilgrims had travelled a similar way for the past one thousand years! The people who built these churches and constructed these bridges did so out of a world view – a sense of human consciousness – that is very different from today.
We took the pilgrim route to Santiago because it plunged us back into a medieval consciousness: we wanted to enter into the mind of a 14th Century pilgrim. At the same time we wanted to discover why modern people were now walking or cycling the Camino in such numbers. What are the continuities and discontinuities with the past?
The idea of pilgrimage seems almost as old as recorded history. En route to our starting point in Northern France we visited the Roman temple ruins in Bath. The Sacred Spring lies at the very heart of this ancient monument. Water rises here at the rate of over a million litres a day and at a temperature of 460C. The spring rises within the courtyard of the Temple of Sulis Minerva and water from it feeds the Roman baths.
There is some evidence that suggests it was already a focal point for pilgrimage and worship before the Roman Temple and baths were built. In short, people had been making journeys to this site for a very long time: the geo-thermal spring seems to have represented a power beyond themselves that was simply attributed to the current deity.
What interested us were the small pieces of lead, recovered by archeologists, on which pilgrims had written their petition to the Goddess. The requests mostly arose out of a desire for justice and revenge. It seems that when people lack power to put right a wrong committed against them, they turn to the 'gods'.
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