{"id":870986,"date":"2026-04-04T06:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/870986\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T06:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T06:39:13","slug":"town-to-celebrate-historic-spain-pilgrimage-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/870986\/","title":{"rendered":"Town to celebrate historic Spain pilgrimage links"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A Berkshire town is preparing to embrace its medieval links with north-west Spain with a celebration of an ancient pilgrimage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Reading is the official start point of the English leg of the famous Camino de Santiago route.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The 68.5-mile (110km) section, known as St James&#8217; Way, begins at the Reading Abbey ruins and ends in Southampton, from where pilgrims historically travelled by boat to Spain, before finishing at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Walk the Spanish Way Fair on 25 April is hoping to bring the experience of walking the Spanish stretch of the pilgrimage a little closer to home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It comes after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cn0g0x302pro?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:unveiling of a milestone marker;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;unveiling of a milestone marker&quot;}\" class=\"link \">unveiling of a milestone marker<\/a> in Reading in November. The granite marker, which was shipped from Spain, marks the start of St James&#8217; Way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Reading has been linked with Spain since the medieval period, with Reading Abbey being an important pilgrimage site during the 12th Century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The celebration later this month on Broad Street will feature traditional music, exhibitions and Galician food, as well as screenings and audiovisual content about the Camino walk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Representatives of the Camino Ingles (English Way) and Camino Fisterra-Muxia, the route known as the final stretch, will also make an appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The fair was organised by the Provincial Council of A Coru\u00f1a, Turismo de Galicia, the Spanish Embassy in London, and is backed by Reading&#8217;s Economy &amp; Destination Agency (Reda).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Alex Brannen, from Reda, said: &#8220;With an ever-growing interest in outdoor and walking tourism, Reading is indeed fortunate to be linked to the most famous pilgrimage route in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in walking one of the famous Spanish caminos, visiting Galicia or walking the St James&#8217; Way here in the UK, to find out more and get inspired for their next holiday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"The back of a man wearing a rucksack in the foreground looks ahead to a church\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"870\" height=\"489\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/e84d6cf91d8f5c1e1851bdf342baedd3.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The pilgrimage ends at the shrine of St James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela [Reda]<\/p>\n<p>More on this story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Berkshire town is preparing to embrace its medieval links with north-west Spain with a celebration of an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5312],"tags":[247234,149687,2000,299,144588,28606,247233,247235,104,247236],"class_list":["post-870986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-abbey-quarter","tag-camino-de-santiago","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-pilgrimage","tag-reading","tag-reading-abbey","tag-reda","tag-spain","tag-st-james"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116345069020095728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}