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| El
Camino |
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I’ve just come
back from a ‘long walk in Spain’, which is how I first perceived
it when I decided to walk El Camino de Santiago. That would be the
equivalent of describing the Rhythms as ‘having a bit of a jig’.
I went with Jill, my sister, and we walked 500 kilometres across the north
of Spain, to Santiago and then on, to Finisterre. |
| That’s the bare
bones of it, except that now this ancient pathway is in my bones. |
| It certainly felt
like it was rearranging the bones in my feet at times! Yes, blisters,
and yes, they hurt, but after each day’s walking even the bones and
tendons and muscles of my feet were recording the history of the day.
And there was a stretch, quite early on, when I really couldn’t think
why I was doing this, or whether I wanted to continue, or whether I could.
I got really low. |
| And we were held,
somehow, by the path, by the old and sacredness of it and by people.
The path on El Camino Frances, the route we were on, is waymarked, for miles
and miles and miles, by yellow arrows, painted on walls, houses, the road,
stones, posts and scallop shells, on signposts, engraved in pavements, built
into the walls of houses. This is a route that in many ways hasn’t
changed for centuries, so people were confident to have tiles on their homes
with a scallop shell showing the way through their villages to help peregrinos
along. And the people. The people. From day one, in a large
town, people would wish us ‘Buen Camino’. People in the
streets, in shops and as we left the refuges every morning. As the
towns became country, became villages, became hamlets, people would wish
us well. People beeped the horns of their cars and waved encouragement.
Old people and young, would momentarily look up from ploughing and planting
and call out Buen Camino. In one town a driver approached from a side
road the road we were walking along. When he saw us he reversed so
that we didn’t have to walk around the back of his car. We were
nearly at the end of that day’s walking and every step mattered.
That act felt like an enormous act of kindness. And so it probably
was. |
| At
first I felt like a tourist doing a pilgrimage. I was amazed and didn’t
really get that people really wished us well. I wondered what people
saw, especially those who lived in villages that seemed so poor to me.
I imagine that the cost of my walking gear would have fed their family for
a month. Didn’t they see this privileged foreigner, traipsing
through their countryside, poncing about with time to go walking?
Who knows? But I began to feel and see and trust and eventually to
some degree to understand that they saw a pilgrim. That what was still
a concept to me was a daily spiritual reality to them. People walking
for their souls. And they wished us well. |
| Not
that it’s all foreigners, by the way. Far from it. Many, many
Spaniards walk it, some all at once, some bit by bit, coming back each year
to walk on from where they left off. Some people fly in, as we did
and walk on, others start from their homes all over Europe. We met
a Frenchman walking for a year. He was coming back along the way,
heading on to Rome and Jerusalem. The youngest peregrino I met was
8 ½ and the oldest 74. |
| And
so, poco a poco, El Camino has seeped into me. Each day we were woken
by the rustle of plastic bags being shoved into rucksacks. Sometimes
we had breakfast straight away, sometimes we walked first, hoping that a
village bar would be open and surrendering (what else to do?) when it wasn’t.
Or sometimes the hamlet was so small it seemed that a bar or a shop would
be ludicrous! We slept each night in the refuges, which ranged from
wonderful to dire, yet all maintained by volunteers, often people who had
done the walk, wanting to support others. I’d dreaded having
to have a cold shower every day, but this rarely happened. Hot water
– wonderful! We woke, we walked for 6-8 hours, we washed ourselves
and our daily clothes, we ate, we slept, we walked. I didn’t
take a book (well, I did, but after day one the pack I thought couldn’t
get any lighter had to get lighter and 12k became 10, the book being a casualty). |
| Day
by day we approached Santiago, sunshine, rain, wind, hot and cold, up mountains
and down again, across vineyards and valleys, in and out of bars.
We met people walking faster or slower than us and by the end had dropped
into a pace whereby we kept re-meeting people in the evenings. Each
night an informal roll call; ‘Maggie got here earlier, followed by
the priest – are the Austrians behind you?’ We found companions
that we could walk in silence with and talk easily and openly with.
The Jesuit priest, was walking for the third time. He walked it before
becoming a priest and then a few years later. Now, approaching Santiago
to arrive for his 70th birthday he was doing it again, offering
masses along the way in the refuges. I cried when, in the big cathedral
in Santiago, we attended ‘our’ pilgim mass (there is one everyday
naming by nationality who has just arrived) – and there he was –
(our priest!) offering mass with the regular padres. I didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry as I saw him stepping up to the massive goldendripping
altar in his robes – and trainers! |
| They
say that anyone can begin as a tourist, but that everyone finishes as
a pilgrim – and while I don’t know whether that’s true
for everyone, it feels true for me. There is so much I would say
if I could. It would be like trying to describe the experience of
dancing deeply. If you are even vaguely considering the possibility
of going, do pack your bag and go. There are websites and books
(I’ll put some below). You don’t have to be Catholic
(I’m not), or religious. You don’t have to be anything.
Everyone walks (or cycles) their own camino. Part of mine was going
with my sister, which stretched and nourished us both. She amazed
me, over and over as she walked hers. Go alone, go with a friend,
a lover, a family member, but if you’re even wondering whether to
go – go.
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| www.santiago-compostela.net
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| www.pilipalapress.com |
| Confraternity
of St James www.csj.org.uk |
| Pilgrim
Stories, by Nancy Frey |
| Walking
the Camino, Ben Cole and Bethan Davies, Pili Pala Press (we used this as
we travelled) |
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