May 2024
Here is the view from O Cebreiro, which every pilgrim will recognise as one of the most stirring panoramas on the whole network of the Caminos. This photo was taken one evening last summer, as Mount Capeloso basked in fading sunlight and the valley below fell into shadow, but the view is just as glorious on a clear winter’s day, or under grey skies. To me, the graceful form of this landmark bears companison with Mount Fuji or Mount Kilimanjaro. Whatever the weather, the mountain-scape endures.
The view of Capeloso (and its companion, ‘El Faro’, ‘the Lighthouse’), is one that Galicia’s Bronze Age inhabitants would have known, as would the Celts and the Romans. Both these civilisations left their traces in the settlement at the top of the pass, the gateway to Galicia that became O Cebreiro. Through the centuries this glorious panorama has been the backdrop to countless lives: men and women who tilled the land, people who prayed and fought here, the makers, sellers, servants and craftspeople of earlier ages. Thousands, if not millions, of travellers - among them the medieval crowds of pilgrims making their way to Compostela from every corner of Europe - have passed this way and marvelled. For those who made this ascent to O Cebreiro in an era before maps were common, the mountain was a point of orientation, a waymark. Moving on, the travellers would have taken the image of it with them as a memory. Today’s pilgrims, sitting cross-legged on a stone wall and enchanted by the vista before them, do the same - and are in good company, whatever the season.