Just over a month ago I set out to walk from the French foothills of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. I was to walk in the footsteps of pilgrims who have been following the Camino de Santiago since the ninth century. I was completely confident in my ability to keep walking until I got there but as it turned out I was wrong.
The Camino de Santiago is unique in the world and people come from every continent to follow its various routes to the Cathedral in Santiago where the relics of St James the Apostle are said to lie. The route I chose was the Camino Frances – the French Route, which is by far the most popular and the best supported with infrastructure and information. It starts in the French town of St Jean Pied de Port and follows a path of almost eight hundred kilometres through four major Spanish regions before reaching Santiago de Compostela. Many people decide not to stop there but on carry on another ninety kilometres to Finisterra – “The End of the Earth”, before accepting that the Atlantic Ocean really does represent the end of the road. Whole libraries have been written about the Camino and I don’t really see a need to add to the general information that is out there. I want to concentrate on my own experience and thoughts before, during and after my Camino.
I had planned my Camino for over a year although I had been thinking about it for a lot longer than that. I had read books and articles and seen the film “The Way” starring Martin Sheen. I later learned that I had this last thing in common with pretty much all of the English-speaking pilgrims I encountered. I knew in the abstract that it was a very long walk but I was quite confident. I knew I could walk twenty miles or thirty kilometres in a day without much difficulty. Surely it was just a matter of doing this thirty-one times and I would be home free in Santiago? I assembled my equipment carefully. Word was that your pack should weigh no more than 10% of your body weight. Since I weigh in at well over a hundred kilos that didn’t present a great challenge. By mid-April I was ready to go.
This isn’t the place for a blow by blow account of my Camino. While I was walking, I posted every day to a dedicated Facebook page and this represents the definitive record.
What I want to do here is to highlight some of the thoughts, impressions and learnings I had.
· After I had crossed the Pyrenees on foot I assumed that the rest would be much easier. I was wrong.
· I didn’t expect to be walking through falling snow in late April.
· Going up mountains cooks your lungs. Going down cooks your legs.
· The most important thing you are carrying is your water bottle.
· On the Camino you walk alone only for as long as you want to. People from all over the world mix freely and share experiences.
· The Camino has become extremely popular with Korean people.
· You get used to sleeping in dormitories in albergues (pilgrims’ hostels) very quickly.
· The Camino gets very crowded in Easter week when thousands of Spanish people come out to walk for a few days.
· You can walk with someone for a few hours and then not see them again for days or weeks before walking with them again.
· Your feet will hurt.
This last point is not as trivial as it may sound. There is something slightly comical about a blister in the abstract but there is nothing whatsoever funny about them in practice. I was feeling fairly smug after the first week when I had no blisters on my feet. That all changed on day eight. It was a long day. Over thirty kilometres from Logroño to Nájera and when I took my boots and socks off at the end of the day I had a bloody right heel. A huge blister had developed and if my socks were not already red the right one certainly would have been now. In all honesty I didn’t think too much of it. I covered it with a dressing and carried on. Over the next six days the damn thing just refused to mend. Constant pressure from the boots just forced the wound deeper, added to which I developed a fever and completely lost my appetite for food. I was reduced to drinking full strength Coca Cola just to get some calories on board. It all came to a head on the long day into Boadilla del Camino on day 14. Another 30K plus day saw me collapse onto my bunk in the albergue and stay there for a couple of hours before trying and failing to eat the Pilgrims’ dinner (which was really good I might add). There were two nurses in the albergue that night and both of them looked at me and pronounced that I had to stop, at least for a couple of days. So I reluctantly conceded that I had to find a plan to recover my health and save what I could of the Camino. I took a series of trains across country via Valladolid and Barcelona to Valencia where we have an apartment. Once there I took myself off to the local health centre where a doctor told me I was too fat to walk the Camino and a nurse told me I should have put Vaseline on my feet before socks. The doctor also told me that one of my small blisters was badly infected and that I would have to take some very strong antibiotics for a week. That more or less decided things. I would lie low in Valencia for a week and then head back north to try to meet up with the friends I had made as they hit the 100km to go mark. Then I went to sleep for four days.
A week later I was on my way back north, this time via Madrid. My heel was still sore but I had worked out a way I could get my boots on and start walking again. I did manage to meet up with fellow pilgrims and over six days I walked another 130km, finishing in Santiago last Wednesday.
That day in the Cathedral Square in Santiago was one I will always remember. I had left just 12km to walk on the last morning so starting before 7 am I was in front of the Cathedral by 9.30. Many of my friends arrived within the space of a couple of hours and we spent the morning hugging and chatting and reflecting on what we had achieved. Most of us had had some illness or injury problems. I was not the only one to have skipped stages, although I did probably skip more than anyone else who actually managed to come back. Some people did drop out altogether – maybe to come back another time. That evening a group of eleven of us went to dinner together. Since we didn’t have to be on the road at dawn the next morning the festivity went on into the small hours.
In the end I had walked 541 kilometres, or 336 miles if you prefer, in 20 days. I had passed through a part of France and the Spanish regions of Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y Leon and Galicia. I had crossed dozens of ancient stone bridges, walked alongside windmills high on mountain ridges and endured rain, snow and force eight gales.
So what have I taken away from the Camino? A reinforcement of my existing love of Spain. I am so happy to call it my second home. A better appreciation of my own capabilities and perhaps a measure of humility about that. I will always remember that I didn’t manage to do the whole thing but I am a little bit proud that I didn’t just give up and go home.
Most of all I will never again dismiss lightly the news that a group of refugees has walked from Syria or sub Saharan Africa to Europe, carrying such possessions as they are able. With all the benefits of modern lightweight equipment, good health and nutrition I was unable to go more than two weeks without breaking down. Walking five hundred miles is a big deal indeed. The desperation required to undertake a much longer trek with much less cannot be overestimated.
One final note. I didn’t do the Camino to raise money but shortly before I left a friend suggested that maybe people would be willing to contribute to a charity on my behalf if I suffered enough. So I set up a Just Giving page on behalf of the Trussell Trust and a number of people have been generous enough to give to it. It’s still open for business and if you think that walking 336 miles in 20 days is worthy of concrete recognition you could always go and add a little to the total. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ian-camino Thank you very much if you do.
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