Société Française des Amis de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle La plus ancienne de toutes les associations jacquaires – depuis 1950

It’s possible to make the journey with a disability


Given the length and steepness of the route, you might think it impossible to tackle if you’re disabled. And yet…

On August 10, Santiago Cathedral welcomed a blind pilgrim! With his guide, who has already walked 11 routes, he has surveyed, in six sections and since May 2022, the 2,000 km that link the St-Jacques tower in Paris to the Cathedral, via the Turonensis route and the Camino Francès.

While some blind people have walked parts of the route, accompanied by volunteers in association projects or, exceptionally, on their own, very few have done it all. It seemed unattainable to him when he shared his project with a friend in 2022.

“Making a success of such a project means first of all building a perfect tandem,” Jean-Philippe confides to us on his arrival. “
” If I’ve done it, other people can also do it and enable a blind person to make this pilgrimage.” “I wish everyone the happiness of enabling a third party to realize one of their dreams!” tells us his guide, Monique.
“We went from being a tandem of hikers in a blind people’s association, wanting to relax their guide dog, to a brilliant and unusual friendly duo, surprising the other pilgrims, but taking great pleasure in discovering this activity, these mythical places and its particular spiritual power”, continues the pilgrim.

As the tandem is a member of our association, if you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact us. We know from experience that knowing how others have done it can help you take the plunge yourself, here of accompanying a disabled person. “I know I wouldn’t have dared if I hadn’t met Yves, the partner of Web Compostella’s former general secretary. Yves accompanied Lucien, blind and ankle-handicapped, from Le Puy en Velay to Santiago and all the way to Fisterra in 2015,” says Monique. Monique said to herself: “If Yves has done it, then why not give it a try!”
So they built on each other, overcoming the barriers of fear, putting in the daring necessary to cross the Pyrenees and the Spanish mountains, and here they are, in all simplicity, at the end of a journey that will have sealed an extraordinary friendship by bringing them together, beyond all prejudices and all clichés about disability.”

Monique & Jean-Philippe on their arrival at
Santiago on August 10