Article, 22nd June 2005.
The Camino de Santiago - The Pilgrims’ Way
There’s a saying that no one can walk the Camino de Santiago without being changed by the experience. Religious hype you might think, and to be honest I didn’t pay it too much mind. But here’s the kicker: I’ve just completed a good slice of the Camino with my wife and my oldest friend and his wife. A more varied bunch you couldn’t imagine.
Tony has run eight marathons over the years and although not an elite athlete (and indeed a man like myself of senior years) is an experienced mountain day walker and maintains a good level of fitness. His wife Jackie is one of life’s dynamos – never still, always on the move and generating much heat and light. A gym rat, aerobic and Pilates type person.
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My wife, Shakun, is by contrast tranquillity personified. No gym, but yoga. More than that she has never done any serious walking, let along consecutive days carrying a rucksack and in mountain terrain.
And I have loved the mountains for decades and tramped happily over many miles of Scotland, Wales, the Lake and Peak Districts, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies, the Appalachians and even the lower reaches of the Himalayas. Sometimes as part of a group, sometimes solo. So as I said a varied bunch. But we all came back feeling that something wonderful had happened.
Of course there is the walk itself. We started at Ponferrada and had a first day of pine forests, vineyards and dusty villages. Just the two of us – no other walkers met or seen. Then we joined Tony and Jackie at the little village of Cacabelos.
Next morning we set out as a foursome for the first stage along the road then following forest tracks to the beautiful hill village of Villafranca del Bierzo. A morning coffee and snack and then it was a choice of two routes – the valley road route (recommended in bad weather) or the high mountain track. The weather was bright, sunny, hot and hopeful so we opted for the tougher high route. This was a winning decision – steep and hard, but a route lined with bursts of heather and lavender in full bloom, ferns and wild flowers made it totally worthwhile.
So that set the tone – roughly two hours of pretty solid walking then a refreshment break, sometimes lunch in a hillside bar or roadside restaurant others a picnic of air-cured ham, cheeses from the milk of the very cows you were admiring and plump tomatoes from gardens of the last village.
Days of changing scenery sometimes plunging down into lush valleys others walking high forest tracks, passing through tiny rural hamlets or bustling medieval villages. Walking through eucalyptus, oak and chestnut forests alive with birdsong; through meadows of lush pasture and plump contented cows, grazing sheep or skittish goats; along narrow tracks brushing through wild garlic, gorse, mint and bay trees. It was a never ending assault on the senses.
Oh there were the occasional road stretches the burned the feet and anaesthetised the mind, but they were few. More often it was stunning pastoral scenery and picturesque villages.
At one point we were deep in the forest and overwhelmed with 360 degrees of surround sound birdsong – a magical experience.
And as we came nearer to our end goal, Santiago de Compostela, so the numbers grew. There were the four Italian ladies of a certain age who we first met at the train station in Plasencia. There they were twittering around the booking clerk like starlings on a nut cluster. They re-appeared in a restaurant along the way and then again doing their washing in the garden of their Albergue (walkers’ hostel). The newly weds – him from Granada, her from Jaen - sharing the road and tales of blistered feet with a group from Andalusia. The Canadian guy, who was doing the whole route from France – some 800 kms. - in just about 30 days. The Californian lady of some 74 years of age, who was not only doing the whole route, but going on past Santiago to Finisterre.
Then the timeless Swiss lady, who had been walking with her horse acting as a pack mule, for 15 months ! Yes she had started from Geneva over a year ago and was just taking life literally one step at a time.
Racing past and through us were the motor cycle stars of the Fortuna Yamaha racing team. They were not walking in the usual sense as this was part of a team/character building exercise. So a dozen fit young guys and their support team would be hurrying among the ‘pilgrims’ of various sorts.
Germans, Dutch, Americans, Canadians, French, Russians, Italians, Japanese, Spanish of course, and us English, and I’m sure many more, made up the polyglot mass that was descending on Santiago. And although we all travelled the same route, we each had our own journey.
Now don’t get me wrong – this was no road to Damascus revelation, but just a general feeling among four very different people that we had been part of something very special. Walking can do that. To me it is a kind of zen experience. The first days you are conscious of where your feet are placed and adjusting constantly to the terrain. But then you move onto autopilot and you are blissfully unaware of where your feet are because they seem to know the road. You are free to let your mind wander and wonder.
Of course there are moments of total sociability where you chat and stroll either as a foursome (in our case) or as couples. We all had long open conversations with the other members while walking that we would never have had in London. There is something about a shared experience that defies language and builds a bond.
But there are also moments of total solitude where you are walking on your own – and each one of us did this without any prior planning or indeed intention. People who don’t walk ask ‘What do you think about when walking for hours on end ?’ The answer is everything and nothing. Your mind is free to explore the most trivial things and then look into the deepest corners of your life with equal facility. It is a magical thing.
I know that each of came back from the Camino with things resolved within us – and they were not necessarily things that we even considered upfront before we went. In fact I would be that if we had had the foresight to ask the question none of us could have foreseen the topics we would visit in our heads during that ‘free thinking’ time.
For my wife it was revelation that she could not only achieve that much physical effort, but enjoy it immensely. She spent the first three days worrying about her office, then found that all her worries had evaporated. The ever-changing scenery, the metronomic effect of walking, the distractions of sights, scents and sounds ‘foreign’ put the mind into another place. For Tony and Jackie it was again the magic mix of the physical somehow freeing up the mental. Arch organiser Jackie had her whole calendar sorted by the end of the walk. Tony had made some very important decisions about how he wanted to wind down from the pressures of work. And all while having the best of good times.
Sure there were a couple of days when the rain sheeted down and the walking was tough. There were blistered feet and sore joints and aching muscles. But there was also a fabulous feeling of well-being. Of life being pretty good.
And then there is the full-stop, punctuation mark of Santiago itself. This gorgeous city with the imposing cathedral, quiet squares, crowded streets of cafes, shops, boutiques, bars and restaurants is a beguiling place. A fitting end to the Camino.
Copyright David Heard, 2005.
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