Reaching Journey's End

Day 28 – Villafranca to Herrerias

We leave Villafranca in ones and twos, Chris staying behind a while to work on his fundraising drive to build a home for former slave children in Ghana. I miss the turn for the more scenic route onwards, but console myself with the thought that my route along the main road is surely the more historically authentic one.

Steve catches up as I’m having a quick lunch, and we walk to Herrerias at the foot of O’Cebreiro, where the girls have reserved places for us in the small albergue; none of us wants to tackle the last big climb of the Camino in the heat of the afternoon sun.

Day 29 – Herrerias to Fillabol

Steve, Chris, and I set out before five in the hope of seeing the sun rise from the top of O’Cebreiro; climbing in the dark proves trickier than we expect, though, and our progress is slow so we watch the sunrise from the upper slopes, before breakfasting at the top. The village of O’Cebreiro is almost as packed as it is beautiful, and after we spend some time in the church – perhaps the oldest along the Camino – we head off into lush, green Galicia, passing a way marker that tells us there are only 150km to Santiago.

The girls catch up with us over lunch and it’s not long before we settle into an albergue in the tiny hamlet of Fillabol, there to while away a stormy evening doing laundry and playing charades.

Day 30 – Fillabol to Sarria

We escape further storms until we reach the outskirts of Sarria, where we dodge into a convenient bar with Canada-based Irish couple Tom and Frances to shelter from the rain. The town, we later discover, is preparing for the next day’s Corpus Christi procession, and at Mass that evening the readings seem apt for us, with ‘journey’ being translated as ‘camino’ and ‘manna’ as ‘Boccadillo de Dios’, which to my untrained ears sounds like ‘sandwiches of God’.

Day 31 – Sarria to Portomarin

The Camino changes radically after Sarria, as hundreds – even thousands – of new pilgrims join us, needing to cover but the final 100km to earn their Compostela certificate.

It’s hard not to be snooty about the newcomers with their tiny packs and shiny boots – ours have all been reduced to a battered and uniformly broken beige – but their fresh eyes remind us of the wonders about which we’ve started to become jaded, and it’s nice to see whole families walking together.

It’s a hot afternoon again, and it takes a toll on me, such that I barely struggle over the bridge and up the steep steps into Portomarin. Despite warnings that albergues fill early with all the extra pilgrims, we have no problem getting beds in a private hostel, the six of us having a ten-bunk dorm to ourselves. It’s just as well, really, as a couple of us miss curfew and to the annoyance of some neighbourhood dogs have to climb in through the dorm window.

Day 32 – Portomarin to San Xulian

I start the day sluggish and ill, and the first eight kilometres take me nearly two hours. After a sandwich and a coffee I pick up a bit and carry on, chatting for an hour or so with a girl from Kilkenny who’s walking with her family. I spot Tom at an albergue and stroll over only to learn that he’s waiting for a taxi to take him to hospital as he’d broken a tooth on a particularly robust piece of local bread; it’s hard not to laugh, given his propensity for quips about bread-related injuries.

The day wears on, and as I pass through Palas de Rei there’s a storm brewing; the storm breaks while I stop in the classic Camino village of San Xulian to check accommodation plans, and so I sit out the thunder and lightning, the downpour, and the hailstones the size of marbles.

Once the rain eases a little I carry on for another 20 minutes to our albergue, only to find I’ve gotten there so late that my bed has been given away. Full credit to the others, though: Sorren explains that they’d arranged for me to have emergency accommodation, which yet again proves better than a regular dorm.

Day 33 – San Xulian to Arzua

I wake early, after sleeping better than I’ve done in weeks, and spend the day walking with Canadian Steve, who proves a perfect walking companion: we alternate between silence, serious conversation, silly songs, prayers, and pit stops for food, drink, and indeed Mass as we time perfectly our decision to pop into the church at Melide.

We reach Arzua in late afternoon, and check into the same albergue as the others; after the ritualistic sequence of shower, laundry, and nap that marks the typical pilgrim day, we head out for dinner and a drink. It’s hard to believe it’s almost over.

Day 34 – Arzua to Monte del Gozo

We set out as a group again, first marshalling the troops for our typical ‘morning selfie’ on Sorren’s phone, but as usual spread out over the day. This isn’t a problem, since we have a plan: meet up in O Pedrouzo and look for somewhere to camp, as we’ve not slept out since Hornillos, almost three weeks earlier.

The problem with this plan becomes all too obvious when Steve and I reach O Pedrouzo at one in the afternoon. Over bowls of soup with Janet and Taylor, a mother-and-daughter team from Rhode Island, we realise that if we are to camp out we’ll be twiddling our thumbs for the next seven or eight hours.

We decide to push on, and when we meet the others in a nearby bar, are glad to hear they’ve reached the same conclusion. Onward, then, through eucalyptus woods and past Santiago airport to Labacolla where the others catch up and decide to stop for the night. Steve and I are set on going ahead, though, and eventually we reach Monte del Gozo, the hill overlooking Santiago.

At 35km, it’s the longest day of my Camino, and fittingly ends with us standing by the statues of exultant pilgrims, looking at the distant baroque spires of Santiago cathedral.

Day 35 – Monte del Gozo to Santiago de Compostela

Once we’re up and ready, Steve and I meet up with Chad and Mason, two brothers from Colorado we’ve been overlapping with for the last fortnight. We’re slow walking into town; yesterday has tired us, but as much as that, it’s almost as if we want to make this moment last. We linger over breakfast, and stop again at a bakery before facing facts and picking up the pace.

Having left O Pedrouzo at first light, Taylor and Janet catch up with us just as we’ve almost finished saying our rosary together, and we pause to chat as we enter the old town. Gazing up at the looming churches we resume our prayers and wrap up the last decade as we head past the major seminary and through the arch, ending with the Salve as we step into the main square and stare up at the cathedral. We’ve made it.

I meet Jeanne and Diana just after collecting my Compostela, pilgrimage certificate, and we hug as though it’d been a lifetime since we’d last met, not a mere week. We meet Hannah, Sorren, Suzanne, and Chris as they reach the main square, and more hugs follow; this proves a mere prelude to days of handshakes, handclasps, fist bumps, high fives, hugs, and tears, as the city overflows with joy and congratulations. Everyone’s a winner in Santiago.

Chris and Miriam from North Carolina keep me a seat for the pilgrim Mass at noon, and I spot the others filing in after a bit, with plenty of other familiar faces dotted through the crowd. It’s obviously a special day, with the bishop presiding and all the clergy dressed in red, but I can’t figure out why. “What’s the occasion?” I ask Steve. “It’s my birthday,” he smiles. Mass ends with the swinging of the botofumeiro, Santiago’s famous giant thurible, and then we file out to continue our celebrations.

David and Christa, travelling companions of the first week, arrive the following day, and the next day, after I’ve spent the morning lighting candles and saying promised prayers in the cathedral, Leah, who walked with me from the very first day, finally arrives. The four of us go out together that night, but I don’t get much sleep as I’m up early the next day to strap on my boots and start walking again. Fisterra – the medieval end of the earth – awaits.

I stop for coffee after a couple of hours, and leaning back in my seat remark to Australian Paul, sitting next to me, that it’s good to be walking again.

He nods quietly, and then grins: “it’s what we do.” 

After the Meseta: Continuing the Camino Journey

 Day 21 – Mansilla to Leon

We reach Leon in early afternoon, with Barney from Washington drily observing that it didn’t seem to matter whether you walked 18k or 30k in a day; either way you arrived tired. After a nap and a shower we head out, bumping into hordes of pilgrims on the way to the cathedral.

That evening sees the World Cup beginning, and – of more import to us – Sorren’s birthday, so after watching the match in the main square we head off for dinner. Eventually we end up, somewhat improbably, in an Irish bar the main feature of which seems to be a traditional red English phone box. The dance floor is ours for the night, and we all experience an apparent Camino miracle, as our foot ailments are forgotten.

Day 22 – Leon

Sadly, last night’s miracle doesn’t last, but once our feet are suitably sorted, today’s given over to leisurely sight-seeing, with me visiting the breath-taking cathedral and the more quietly reverent church of St Isidore, before meeting the others for drinks at Leon’s opulent state-owned Parador hotel.

After touring the building’s historic cloisters we amble down to the main square to watch Spain play Holland. Nobody expects a 5-1 trouncing, and the crowd sits in stunned silence. Afterwards I meet Dutch Eve, with whom I’d celebrated my birthday; she’s decided to go on by train. “My Camino is over,” she smiles. I never found out what she was seeking here in Spain, but whatever it was, she seems to have found it.

Day 23 – Leon to Mazarife

We leave Leon in ones and twos late in the morning, startling pilgrims who are staying an extra day. “You’re only leaving now?” laugh Davey and Jayne from Holyhead, and while chatting with them I’m joined by David and Christa from Colorado, who I’ve not seen since Burgos.

I walk alone for half the day, content to sleep out should Mazarife’s albergues be full. Walking alone is nice, and gives time for reflection and prayer, staying with those for whom I’ve promised to pray on the way: some are expecting babies, others have recently been bereaved, some are ill, others have recently recovered, some are discerning vocations, one is writing a book, and others have obscure intentions committed to me with the cryptic assurance that God knows what they need.

Home seems so far away here on the Camino, and were it not for the discipline of praying for people, I’m not sure how often I’d think of it.

I stop to fix my boots and grab a quick bite, and as I tinker with the insole that’s been blistering my left foot for more than a fortnight I spot two tiny figures. Hannah and Suzanne, somehow, are later even than me. We carry on, through what seems a continuation of the Meseta, until eventually we reach Mazarife and head straight for the hostel with a pool. As we sign in, we spot that Carlos, Sorren, Diana, and Jeanne are already here, and within a couple of hours Chris and Steve show up too.

Carlos cooks that evening, with a couple of the girls making salad, and the rest of us wash up. It’s good for us all to be together, as we’re expecting tomorrow to be horrible.

Day 24 – Mazarife to Astorga

At more than 32k, today is the longest day of the Camino so far, and it exacts a brutal toll. By the time Chris, Hannah, Suzanne, and I stagger into Astorga, Carlos has fallen 10k behind, with Steve having damaged his knee and being even further back. Jeanne beat us to Astorga but has suspected tendonitis, and Diana looks as exhausted as Suzanne, who has doubts about whether she can walk tomorrow.

That said, it’s a great day in some ways: lunch was a joy, I found temporary insoles that might help my blisters, we encounter a village fiesta that tempts us to stop where we are, and late in the afternoon we rest in the shade of a tree to pool what food we have left and have an impromptu picnic. We may be ending the day with an exhausted pizza, but things might be better in the morning.

Day 25 – Astorga to Foncebadon

Jeanne and Suzanne elect to send their bags on ahead, enabling them to keep walking despite exhaustion and ailments. Chris, Suzanne, and I make good time in the morning and by the time we catch up with Hannah we’ve composed two songs we perform over lunch to the surprise of the other dining pilgrims. Later we’re thanked by Scott from Georgia who says we’ve given him what’ll surely be one of his most cherished Camino moments.

Meeting the other girls at the next town, we decide to push on and end up in a wonderful hostel in Foncebadon. The communal dinner is superb, and it takes discipline to go to bed rather than while the evening away playing with the albergue’s roaming puppies or lounging in the lush green grass, so different to the crunchy yellow grass of the Meseta.

Day 26 – Foncebadon to Ponferrada

The morning sees us climbing to the iconic Cruz de Ferro, a small iron cross on a wooden pole standing on a cairn of stones brought by pilgrims, each signifying a prayer of one sort or another. The highest point of the Camino, the Cruz de Ferro seems to fulfil a dual purpose: buzzing with pilgrims posing and taking pictures, it’s equally a place of quiet contemplation, of deep privacy, of sorrow and gratitude and hope. We spend far longer there than I think any of us expect.

The climb down to the idyllic town of Molinaseca is beautiful but long and treacherous, and by the time I arrive my blisters have become unbearable. I accept a lift to Ponferrada, where at the local hospital which treats pilgrims for free my feet are patched up and I’m given a list of things to buy at the pharmacist.

Day 27 – Ponferrada to Villafranca

“Happy birthday,” I say to Chris when we wake on the floor of the humid library where we’ve hardly slept a wink, adding “You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve turned us into ‘Those People’.”

“Just for one day,” he smiles. Neither of us are fans of the early risers who wake the dorms up with their crepuscular rustling, but today we’ve a long walk ahead of us and want to arrive at Villafranca in time to relax and celebrate properly.

We cover ground quickly in the morning, but by the temperature rises to over 36 degrees in the afternoon, and I struggle terribly, running out of water and depending on Hannah to keep me going. Still, eventually we make it into Villafranca, and before long we’re gathered in the main square watching Australia take on Holland in the football.

The afternoon’s biggest cheer is reserved for the arrival of Steve, who with his knee braced had covered 40k to make it in time for the birthday fun. Dinner follows around the corner, with us being joined by Chris’s friends Paul and Roxy, and Tom and Frances, an Irish couple living in Canada who we’d been bumping into since Burgos. We perform our songs again, this time adding a surprise ditty about Chris, and end the night at a nearby bar where the barmaid isn’t too pushed about Spain’s latest defeat and guaranteed exit from the World Cup.

Bed, then. Tomorrow we approach O’Cebreiro, the Camino’s last big climb.

The Camino Journey Continues

 Day 14 Burgos to Hornillos del Camino

If anything our rest day in Burgos seems to have left us sluggish and tired, and it’s not until eleven or so that we finally shuffle out of town. It’s an easy enough day’s walking, but by the time we get to Hornillos it’s late in the afternoon and everywhere is full.

My ankle is playing up and Bryony is basically done, so going on isn’t really an option; none of us wants to get a taxi anywhere, so instead we while away the evening in the village, eating in a local bar where I charge my phone and camera as best I can, and walk back five minutes or so down the path to make camp beside a wall of hay bales.

I kick away the stones and clods of earth, flattening the area, while Hannah and the others gather hay to make some kind of bedding. We stretch out our two foam mattresses to pad shoulders and hips, snuggle into our sleeping bags and gradually doze off as we watch the skin darken and the stars appear.

Day 15 Hornillos to Castrojeriz

Having expected to be up at cockcrow, instead we have an unexpected lie in, undisturbed by snorers and early risers, so make breakfast in the village square and are on the way around nine.

Trudging across the Meseta isn’t nearly as arduous as the early days of the Camino, but it still takes a toll, and by the time we reach the beautiful 14th Century ruins of San Anton, Bryony’s knee and foot aren’t capable of much more. Still, Castrojeriz is just down the road so we push on and eventually reach it, settling into a private albergue opposite the parish church of St Dominic.

After a crisis with a sleeping bag falling from a window, Jeremy and Steve forage for food and get some basics, but it’s only when Hannah discovers the local supermarket that dinner starts to look promising and she proves as good a cook as the others had told me. We while away the last hour or so before bed chatting, with the hospitalero thanking me for payment with an eager “go raibh maith agat”.

Day 16 Castrojeriz to Fromista

Bryony clearly can’t go on and Jeremy decides it makes sense to accompany her back to London and return to finish the Camino next year, so for our last day together she gets the bus to Fromista while Jeremy walks with us one last time. The morning’s climb is beautiful and afterwards the day is a gentle stroll, the central but enlivened by the company of Dave and Jane, a Welsh couple from Holyhead whose first date had seen them watching The Way together.

I’m irritable on arrival in Fromista and unfairly snap at Steve when he starts making plans for Mass when we can’t even find the hostel. All irritation is dispelled, though, once settled in the hostel and I check my email to find my closest friend has asked me to be godfather to her little boy. Mass in beautiful, and ends with a pilgrim blessing culminating in our singing the ‘Salve Regina’ together.

The night ends with the group of us in the albergue dining room, drinking wine and watching clips from The Muppet Show on YouTube. There are worse ways to end adventures.

Day 17 Fromista to Carrion de los Condes

We say our goodbyes in the morning, pausing for a group photo, and then set off at an atypically fast pace. Deciding to take the alternative route along the river rather than the main road, we split up and walk alone for the morning, meeting up again for lunch beside the huge Templar church in Villalcazar de Sirga.

We reach Carrion by two and by three are exploring the town; later that afternoon I meet American Chris, Carlos, and a few others as they saunter in. Before Mass we have a multilingual singsong with the nuns who run our hostel, my highlight being the improbable inclusion of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ amongst the hymns.

For dinner later we eschew the standard pilgrim menu in favour of a few smaller dishes; the pigs’ ears were worth trying, but I’ll not rush to have them again.

Day 18 Carrion to Terradillos de los Templarios

I set off with Kiwi Jeanne for another long flat trudge across the Meseta, with Canadian Steve catching up after a couple of hours, and I drop back to walk alone for a bit. Later in the afternoon I wait outside a bar in Ledigos for others to catch up, and after chatting with another Chris, a historian from North Carolina who had somehow done a 50k day just a week or so earlier, I walk the last few kilometres to Terradillos.

Terradillos is an old Templar town, but nothing remains of its past glory; there’s little there now bar a friendly hostel where I spend most of my time chatting with Liz and Adam, a couple from Maine I’d been bumping into since before Burgos. Both are experienced travellers, with Adam having hiked America’s Appalachian, Transcontinental Divide, and Pacific Coast trails; it seems fitting that they’re spending their honeymoon doing the Camino together.

Day 19 Terradillos to Hermanillos de la Calzada

I reach Sahagun in time for lunch, walking through the morning with Sorren, a medical student from California, and after lunch the two of us set off with Carlos, Chris, Hannah, and Diana, a Spaniard living in Dublin, for the dry 12k stretch to Hermanillos de la Calzada.

Carlos and Diana make better time than the rest of us, and when our straggling foursome arrive, exhausted, the hostels are full, save for emergency overflow accommodation. How did we feel about a self-contained five room section including a sink, a balcony, power sockets, and no curfew? Let’s just say we weren’t complaining.

Day 20 Hermanillos to Mansilla de las Mulas

I’m not sure any day since the first has loomed as scarily as this: 24k following a Roman road across the sun-hammered Meseta, with nowhere to refill our water bottles. Well prepared, though, with mountains of fruit, sandwiches, and boiled eggs, our bottles full and water being downed by the bucket before starting, it’s really only in the last four kilometres that we begin to struggle.

Still, we pool what we’ve got left and hoisting our packs back onto our backs, sing our way into Mansilla de las Mulas. “Always remember to sing,” said the sisters at Carrion.

Tomorrow we reach Leon, where we’ll celebrate Sorren’s birthday. It’s hard to believe we’re almost two thirds of the way to Santiago.

Continuing the Camino Journey

Day 7 – Los Arcos to Logrono

“Dein Gebuertstag?” beams the pretty German girl opposite me at breakfast, nudging her father to join her in singing “Happy Birthday to You”. It’s a cheering start to the day, and once I meet Leah outside the town’s church I’m further pleased to discover that somehow I’ve finally acquired the knack of walking effectively with two poles.

We move faster than we’ve done any day so far, striding through the landscape as the sun beats down, and after lunch in beautiful, medieval Viana, we reach Lograno in mid-afternoon, accompanied by an Irish lady, Angela, who we’d met on the way. Lounging in the hostel’s courtyard we watch the storks flying overhead and sip our beers as we chat with a trio of New Zealanders before Leah and Swiss Fabian disappear; while they’re gone David and Christa phone from Viana, giving me my second “Happy Birthday to You” of the day.

Puzzled and somewhat irked by the others’ absence, I chat with Angela and the Kiwis as they have dinner, and then slip outside to visit the nearby church, marvelling at the agonisingly realistic crucifix in a side chapel. I meet the others while I’m taking pictures outside, and am then both delighted and embarrassed when they produce a birthday cake in the hostel, leading Kiwis, Italians, and Japanese in the day’s third rendition of “Happy Birthday to You”.

After dinner in town we’re met by Spanish Carlos and a couple of the others, and though there’s only half an hour to play with before the hostel’s curfew kicks in I’m only too happy to follow Carlos to a little street full of tiny wine and tapas bars, there to make the most of that wonderful half hour. As birthdays go, it’s not been a bad one.

Day 8 – Logrono to Najere

At more than 30k, today’s an even longer day than yesterday, and not one helped by starting tired. It’s a long, draining, dispiriting trudge, with a constant threat of heavy rain, and when we finally reach Najere there’s an exhausted couple of kilometres through the town before we cross the bridge to the hostels.

Scarcely are my boots off before my teeth start chattering, and I begin to shiver. I drag out my sleeping bag and get into it as quickly as I can, but for the next hour or so I’m less coherent than usual; the sudden drop in body temperature after such an arduous and damp day is taking a toll. Hearing all the hot water’s gone, I decide this probably isn’t the time for a cold shower, so when I warm up a bit I get dressed afresh and go out to join the others for dinner. The hot, paprika-laden red bean stew I have as a first course is all the medicine I need, and as we sit around talking before bed, it’s almost as if I’ve been fine all evening.

Day 9 – Najere to Santo Domingo de la Calzada

The wine-purple clay path up out of Najere looks rugged and promises a day of beautiful views, but today’s is a grey and tedious walk, and when we get to Santo Domingo we’re only too glad of an early dinner. I’ve arranged to meet Javier, a charismatic stick-twirling Spaniard, at that evening’s pilgrim Mass, and the others come along too; none of us, I think, is prepared for the sheer dazzling beauty of the ceremony, with the small choir singing pieces by Handel and Mozart and with Holy Communion being accompanied by a hymn to the tune of ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ from The Mission.

As for the concert that followed, you’ve not lived till you’ve heard choral versions of ‘My Way’ and ‘Danny Boy’ in Spanish.

Day 10 – Santo Domingo to Tosantos

The dynamic of the group has changed in recent days, and walking’s felt like a macho charge, so I say my goodbyes to Leah this morning, planning on walking alone; instead, though, I get talking to the New Zealand trio from Logrono, and end up walking with two of them, one going ahead by bus, carrying an injured foot.

Most pilgrims operate in line, more or less, with a book, and as English speakers we carry John Brierley’s one. Today, for the first time, we go beyond Brierley’s designated stage, thinking we should get a start on what looks like a challenging day tomorrow. It proves an inspired decision, as Tosantos sees my Camino change gear radically.

The village is tiny, and at the little local bar we meet the wildly gesticulating Javier and, it would seem, half the village’s eighty inhabitants. Communal dinner in the albergue is followed by a prayer session upstairs in the little oratory, and then a singsong masterminded by a Frenchman named Paschal, armed with a miniature guitar and a seemingly inexhaustible array of songs in languages as diverse as Polish and Basque. It’s an astonishing evening, and one that sends me to bed glowing.

Day 11 – Tosantos to San Juan de Ortega

Brierley’s book seems to have made today look a lot more challenging than it really is, as despite his topographic outline, today seems devoid of a third steep climb, instead featuring a long flat stroll through woods that seem to go on forever. It’s a glorious day, and we’re still fresh as we stroll down towards the hamlet of San Juan del Ortega.

With just twenty inhabitants, San Juan consists of little more than a beautiful church, a monastery that’s now a hostel, and a bar, so after the standard rituals of shower and laundry the afternoon is whiled away in front of the latter with the other pilgrims including a clutch of Americans and Jeanne, an unfeasibly tall New Zealander I’d first met outside Estella when she’d asked me to take a photo of her by the nearby wine fountain, and who tells us all of King Juan Carlos’s abdication.

Rather than Mass, there’s a short service and pilgrim blessing in the church, and dinner is a mixture of chicken pie, salad, and black pudding, the latter being very much the area’s signature dish. As the sun sets, and we fall asleep laughing at the bizarre snoring in the dorm, I think this may just have been the best day so far.

Day 12 – San Juan to Burgos

Hannah, Jeremy, and I accumulate people as the day goes on; Chris from Missouri joins us after breakfast, where he’d read to us about how we’d be passing Europe’s earliest known human settlement, and at lunch we’re joined by Stephen, a Canadian discerning a vocation to the priesthood. By early afternoon we’re into the vast industrial estates outside Burgos and it seems an age before we reach the city’s historic heart, there to meet Briony, still limping a bit, but doing much better than when she’d left Santo Domingo.

With all the hostels full, we’re somehow able to get a hotel room with five beds, and suitably showered we stroll out; after Mass at the city’s astonishing gothic cathedral, I join the others for dinner, before Carlos helps us take advantage of the lack of a curfew to sample the local nightlife. After a succession of bars we get back late, but it’s the first time since I’ve started the Camino that I fall asleep to a soundtrack other than snoring.

 

Day 13 – Burgos

Today’s plan to visit Calleruega, birthplace of St Dominic, is scuppered when Stephen establishes that getting there would entail two buses and a five kilometre walk, with us not being able to return until tomorrow morning. Instead we while away our first rest day ambling about in Burgos, and after the evening’s pilgrim Mass meet up with a host of other pilgrims, ranging from the likes of Carlos and Susan who’d arrived in Burgos yesterday to others who’d caught up and arrived today, notably David and Christa, who I’d not seen in a week, with Leah appearing to join us for as long as she could.

On the Camino a week feels like a lifetime, and with so much to catch up on, dinner’s an emotional affair, as is the subsequent session, complete with shameless dancing, in a nearby pub. It bodes well for tomorrow, when we set off into the Meseta. 

First Steps on the Camino Journey

A whole carriage on the train from Paris to Bayonne is packed with foreigners bearing rucksacks, sticks, and scallop shells, and dozens of us disembarked at Bayonne to wait for our bus. “Buen Camino,” says a dark-haired girl to me, adding, “well, it’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?”

At the pilgrim office in St Jean Pied de Port, I get talking to Tony, an Australian whose son had been in Catholic Voices and is about to start as a Dominican novice; we click immediately and stay overnight in the same hostel, where the host oddly insists that we’re not pilgrims yet and gives plenty of sensible advice about hydration and the how tight our boots should be. After a wonderfully friendly dinner with a group of French pilgrims, I head to bed at ten, there to lie awake for hours among the snores.

Day 1 – St Jean Pied de Port to Roncevalles

Several friends had told me the first day of the Camino is brutal, but I hadn’t expected anything like this. Tony and I set out early, buying some food at a nearby stop and before long we met someone from the same Manchester estate as my cousins; the three of us carried on together, but as the road got steeper and the rains began to drive, we separated out. Eventually, somehow, I collapsed into the small auberge and bar at Orisson two hours later, less than a third of the way along.

Inside was chaos, a Tetris-like mass of bodies, bags, hats, coats, and sticks, rain dripping everywhere; through fogged glasses I spotted Tony signalling from where he was stooped over coffee with Leah, a German girl who had breakfasted with us. Suitably warmed, we set out again, Tony moving ahead and Leah and I finding we’d roughly the same pace.

It was as well we did, because we needed to help each other with our rainwear and water supply, and though the uphill slope was never again as rough as it had been to Orisson, the weather made up for it with fog, thunder, lightning, wind, heavy rains, hail, and even snow. Our heads down, we battled on with four people returning past us, a French man muttering that this was no day for a promenade and an American lady fearing she had hypothermia, but then I realised that the gaps between lightning and thunder were increasing. The storm was moving off.

Leah laughed, and pointed, crying “Blue sky!”, and sure enough, the tiny azure patch she spotted soon expanded, so for about three hours we had comfortable walking conditions, mud halfway up our shins notwithstanding. We separated then for the last patch, just before the second storm of the day, and as she went on ahead, I met David and Christa, an American couple, the three of us carefully picking out way down the muddy, slippery, winding slopes to the monastery at Roncesvalles.

I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a shower as much as I did mine there, or seen a face light up with joy so much as Leah’s did over her first spoonful of soup. After the pilgrim Mass, Tony and I sat chatting before heading to our dorms, where I talked a while with Larissa, the German girl bunking next to me, before the lights went out.

Day 2 – Roncevalles to Zubiri

This had been the day I’d feared most, thinking I’d be exhausted after the first long hike, but it proved steady enough. We set out without breakfast through the ‘Witches’ Wood’, bought food in the next village, and ate it when we bought coffee another couple of kilometres later. Unfortunately, we lost Larissa soon after, as she comfortably outpaced the rest of us, but that’s the way of the Camino. She’s probably in Santiago now, given the speed at which she strode.

Today’s hike seemed mainly about adjustments – finding our rhythms, working out where we were hurting and why, and tinkering with our backpacks. The last stretch, though, coming into Zubiri, where we were planning on eating before going on a further five kilometres, was as lethally slippery as the approach to Roncevalles the previous day, such that it was a blessing that it didn’t rain till we were tucking into our sandwiches in the company of David and Christa. “We seem to keep meeting on downward bits,” Christa pointed out.

Given the rain and our tiredness, going on wasn’t a real option, so we found a nearby hostel and settled in, a spectacularly international group talking a marvellous Pre-Babel Eurovision hybrid language, mashing together English, Spanish, Italian, and German, depending on who was talking. After Mass in the little local church, eight of the ten from our dorm ate dinner together, accompanied by an American couple that had miscalculated disastrously when crossing the Pyrenees, and had stayed out overnight on the slopes leading to Roncesvalles. I’m still not sure how they survived.

Day 3 – Zubiri to Pamplona

Looking out into the morning rain, Tony reckoned it might not last. “At least there’s one optimist in the group,” laughed David. “An optimist here being someone who says the clouds are half empty rather than half full,” I ventured, before getting up.

It rained almost all day, but with the route mostly level we stayed as a fairly cohesive group until we reached the outskirts of Pamplona, when the hard asphalt took a toll, such that we spread out and divided into two groups, the larger one staying in the main hostel in town, and a handful of us in a small German-run one.

After exploring the town, a few of us regrouped for dinner, an emotional event with Tony heading off in the morning, keeping to his original plan of making it to Pamplona and then heading north to the so-called ‘Primitive Route’. At two minutes to ten, Leah spotted the time and remembered that we had a curfew, so we had to bolt back to the hotel and knock ten minutes late. It was all very embarrassing, and saw me scolded and chased upstairs to bed for the first time in my adult life.

Day 4 – Pamplona to Puente la Reine

Wagnerian snoring was the order of the night, and when I got up to the tune of Taizé chants played at increasing volume, I did so with heavy limbs and eyelids. “Gregory,” said Doris, one of the owners, wagging her finger at me, “I hope this will not happen again,” but she seemed this time to realise there had been an honest mistake. Ernst, her husband, smiled indulgently.

Onward then Leah and I went, slowly plodding along like hobbits lost without Gandalf, clearly missing Tony’s pace. Still, we bought food and, opening up to each other, trudged across the fields and gently uphill, meeting David, Christa, and a few of the others at a village where they’d grabbed an early lunch. We stopped too, hoping to catch them later, and then carried on up the Mount of Forgiveness, gradually finding the confidence to put away our rainwear, switch to t-shirts, and even in my case peg my damp laundry onto my bag.

The climb to the ridge, marked with bronze silhouettes and white windmills, was nowhere near as severe as we’d expected, and even the long march down proved less a scramble than I’d feared. As I’d realised the other day, uphill climbs may break your spirit, but the downhill scrambles break your bones.

Onward then as the day dragged on through three siesta-emptied villages, each with a beautiful Romanesque church, until eventually we made it to Puente la Reine, where we met Carlos from Barcelona in the street and followed his advice to take a proper look at the city’s beautiful medieval bridge before trudging over it heedlessly he next morning.

Afterwards, James from England pointed out that our life as pilgrims seems to be curiously detached from Spanish reality, and I couldn’t help but reply that we go to bed just as the typical Spaniard is tucking into his dinner.

 

Day 5 – Puente la Reine to Estella

As near to a perfect day as we’ve had so far, Leah and I set out early with James and his wife Alicia, strolling over the bridge and catching up with David and Christa on the subsequent slow climb. One hill town saw us meeting a batch of Irish pilgrims, getting a taste of the Camino with a tour company, and as the day got hotter we ached Lorca, where we sat in the street with a dozen or so other pilgrims, resting over tortillas and a small beer or two. Onward then in the heat to arrive for the first time without being exhausted and to spend the afternoon exploring and relaxing. We’re starting to get space to appreciate what’s around us.

Day 6 – Estella to Los Arcos

The shortest and theoretically easiest walk thus far has ended up the most gruelling as incessant rain sapped our spirits and rain filled our boots. We plodded on in our own heads, feeling our own pains, taking our own steps, and for some of us saying our own prayers. Normally it’s the uphill stretches that allow most space for that, but today, strung out and dragging ourselves along, the Camino is more solitary than it has been. The solitude seems almost ironic, given how today’s been a day with poncho-and-rucksack-clad pilgrims constantly in sight, a straggling dotted line of technicolor hunchbacks.

Still, sodden, blistered, and exhausted, I reached Los Arcos at two, checking in with Danish Ann to an Austrian hostel. The cold clearly in my bones, a shower and fresh clothes evidently didn’t help my demeanour much, as while I was having dinner this afternoon a waitress came over and gave me a blanket.

Tomorrow should be the longest day so far. It’s also my birthday. We’ll see how that goes.