Two Galician men undertook the extreme challenge in 2010 of walking more than 6,000 kilometers to Santiago. Many choose to do the Way adventure as a peronal challenge, but in the case of Andrés Fraga and Juan Rivas, "Coru", the challenge went a little further. Taking advantage of the last Xacobeo Holy year in 2010, they decided to try something truly original. They chose to do the Way of St. James from the northernmost point in Europe: Nordkapp (North Cape) in Norway. Over seven months, eleven countries and 6,300 kilometers they lived out a unique experience. Fraga confesses that he would not repeat it, but he does not regret this once in a lifetime adventure.

The shell, as an emblem of pilgrimage, "signum peregrinorum", has been in use since at least the twelfth century, but despite other pagan and Christian uses throughout the centuries, it began to develop enormously in the medieval period as a heraldic element, a symbol of Santiago : of its cathedral, its city, its pilgrims ... The scallop shell became synonymous with Santiago and was used on the facades of palaces, as well as on coats of arms and on tombstones.

July 25 is the feast of St. James, of St. James the Great, of the Apostle James. What does this mean? In the case of the pilgrimage to Compostela it means a lot, because at a certain point the church created the possibility of a general pardon for all pilgrims during the year in which the feast of the Saint fell on the Sabbath day, or Sunday as it now called. Thus, the Holy Years were created based on that coincidence. But this was not always the case, so that for centuries the pilgrimage to Santiago did not benefit from these special years, which were probably3 created only in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, following in the tradition of the Roman Jubilee or “grande perdono”. 

The arrival at Monte del Gozo continues to be full of meaning for the pilgrim but can hardly have the significance that it had in former times. The arrival at the top of the hill meant for the pilgrims a moment as crucial as the entrance to the cathedral and tomb of Santiago, for on seeing the city the pilgrim had, for the first time, the certainty of having reached his goal. Today the situation is partly the same, the same emotion of arrival, but the dangers and difficulties left behind are not of the same proportions and, therefore, do not allow the experience to have the same meaning.