A Taste of the Camino de Santiago

Oh my poor feet!

Don’t know what to call this one. Is it a bargain break? (Sure is). Is it a pilgrimage? (Yes, of course. That’s what it’s supposed to be). But couldn't you call it a green trek? A sunshine holiday abroad? A life-changing experience? A sign of the times? Start of an obsession?

When I joined my two friends, they had already clocked up enough miles to get a certificate if ever they made it to Santiago. They had pilgrim passports with colourful stamps, and they had warm, painful and life-enhancing stories to recall. I knew they weren’t going to give up at that point, but  I wasn’t so sure about myself. I had arrived by aeroplane, coach, taxi and bus to a town around 40 km east of Santiago. They had been on the road since just after dawn and were in full stride. I was utterly unfit from a prolonged sedentary job  and immediately set a mileage clock in my head and started an obsessive countdown. A long-legged friend who had gone at the camino multiple ways over the years had told me with derision of seeing a bus dropping awl wans (old ones if you are not Irish) a few miles out of Santiago to stagger the last bit into town. Quelle horreur!, I didn’t say.

I love walking, though I am no longer any good at it. Tommy Tiernan, the thinking man’s comedian, calls it a great cure for madness. Next to my slimbo friends I was Gulliver in Lilliput. I can truly say I passed no one in a poorer condition of fitness than myself (though it's not like I passed anyone anyway). But no matter. I am only saying this to encourage the hesitant.

In less than an hour after meeting we were so deep in the country, green country – in burnt out heat-desiccated SPAIN! - that the bliss of that offset the developing blisters. It was tough going sometimes. Still hot in September, hilly - and of course it was unknown terrain. But just when it seemed like you might want to stab a pilgrim for a shot of coffee, in the middle of nowhere you would round a bend and there, sitting under a canopy of trees, was the thing you had dreamed of on every hike you ever did – an aromatic little café with snacks, bottled water, shade and chairs! Something else was noticeable too. Very reasonable prices, sympathetic mutual wincing between strangers in the queue and at the  tables outside. Camaraderie! And tangible efforts by the woman behind the counter to understand and accommodate. I hadn’t experienced that for a while on my travels.

Left to my own devices I might have sat under one of those trees for the afternoon, but the arrival and departure of pilgrims helps maintain a pace, lends a mild sense of urgency to get to the next milestone, or nearest albergue for the night.

We continued on through forests of eucalyptus, past decorated horreos (grainstores) and fields of corn and cabbage that reminded me of Ireland, but an Ireland that had pole-shifted down to summer holiday land, so that alongside the cabbages were peaches and vines, though not vineyards (this was the French Way). I did 15 kms that day. My companions added 24 to their awesome, mounting tally. We passed a fellow who had walked from northern France in a series of seasons. When someone strode past at a clip or swept by on a bicycle there was always an acknowledgement, or a Poco pocito! if they were Spanish and you looked knackered. 

When we got to the albergue, there was a cheerful masochist from Northern Ireland with a 40 kg rucksack who had prepared for the trek across the Pyrenees by running up hills in Donegal in several coats with the bag on his back. He was planning to do another route as soon as he got to Santiago. I should say the goal of the pilgrimage is to get to the Cathedral of St James in Santiago from wherever you start out, along waymarked routes, at whatever pace is comfortable for you, or uncomfortable enough for you if you want to make a Lough Derg of it. You can cycle, and a great many French and Spaniards flew past us on wheels. Purists can be scornful of the cyclists, but St James probably doesn’t object and neither do the owners of small hostelries and cafes who were saved from emigration and indigence by the Camino de Santiago and the happy mix of pilgrims and hikers and cheapskate holidaymakers who walk the landscape of Galicia from spring to autumn every year.

St James

St James, or St Iago, son of Zebedee and Salome, was one of Jesus’ earliest apostles, along with his brother John. Executed by the sword of King Herod Agrippa I in person, James’ remains are said to be held in Santiago de Compostela in western Galicia, regarded as the third holiest city in Roman Catholicism. He is the patron saint of Spain and his feast day is 25 July. This year, ie 2010, is a Jubilee year, when the feast day falls on a Sunday and record numbers of pilgrims are expected, with up to 200,000 qualifying for a certificate, or Compostela. You get a Compostela (with your name spelt in Latin) if you show that you have completed 100 kms (200 kms for cyclists).

Here is a little more about the beloved saint from Wikipedia:

“According to ancient local tradition, on 2 January of the year AD 40, the Virgin Mary appeared to James on the bank of the Ebro River at Caesaraugusta, while he was preaching the Gospel in Iberia. She appeared upon a pillar, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and that pillar is conserved and venerated within the present Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, in Zaragoza, Spain. Following that apparition, St James returned to Judea, where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in the year 44.[5][6]

“The translation of his relics from Judea to Galicia in the northwest of Iberia was effected, in legend, by a series of miraculous happenings: decapitated in Jerusalem with a sword by Herod Agrippa himself, his body was taken up by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Iria Flavia in Iberia, where a massive rock closed around his relics, which were later removed to Compostela. An even later tradition states that he miraculously appeared to fight for the Christian army during the battle of Clavijo, and was henceforth called Matamoros (Moor-slayer). Santiago y cierra España ("St James and strike for Spain") has been the traditional battle cry of Spanish armies.”

“St James the Moorslayer, one of the most valiant saints and knights the world ever had ... has been given by God to Spain for its patron and protection.”    Cervantes, Don Quixote

It wouldn’t be religion unless all this was disputed by scholars, sceptics, rivals and barflies, so there is a lot more on the subject here.  

One thing about the Irish – they love a good pilgrimage. They love all the blisters and sprains, the frozen ankles (the Pyrenees) and the hunger. Another thing is they don’t mind having a good laugh and sharing the memory of the pain over a good meal and a few drinks in a warm hostel. We met a disproportionate number of Irish – or that was my recollection anyway on my 2-day sample of the camino, for which I got no Compostela (30 km at a stretch) but lost a small toenail from tight boots. We spent one night in an albergue and the other sharing a triple hotel room. The albergue served up crisp sheets, hot showers, Galician soup and ruby rich wine from the Ribeira Sacra. The next morning we got lost, found our way again and rambled and then trudged (I did anyway) through more fragrant eucalyptus woods, past farms and orchards to a smart looking hotel just 10 kms from Santiago where we fell into another reasonably priced pilgrim meal, followed by the sleep of the dead. My two friends left at dawn. I got the bus at 10.00 am in my flip flops and we reached the Cathedral in Santiago around the same time.

Twelve o’clock Mass is where those who have made it in to the city that morning gather and the Cathedral was packed on a September Friday. Two young lads a couple of seats ahead were carrying a tall gold-fringed banner and one of them had a T-shirt with a cedar and map of Lebanon on the back. Both of them had the profiles of early Christian apostles, so they had probably come a long way. The priest called out the nationalities of the pilgrims who had received Compostelas that morning and the group from St Martin got resounding applause. Could that have been St Martin of Canigou in the Eastern Pyrenees? I don’t know, but if it was, then they had walked almost a thousand kilometres.

Santiago is a lovely compact city with cosmopolitan shops and a prosperous appearance, which must feel quite strange to someone who has just walked several hundred kilometres due west through country landscape and many people spoke of the sense of not wanting to arrive, or striving to get there but not wanting it to be over. 

I stayed in a sparkling little 3rd floor pension where the sweet elderly couple who ran it had looked after my bag while I was away. It was bang in the middle of town and cost €25 a night. We missed the morning bus due south the following day and so took another out to the coast at Noia, where we had a picnic on the grass looking out to sea. Noia looked just as prosperous and cosmopolitan as Santiago and put paid to my images of wild and remote Galicia. But it is altogether lovely, and I can fully understand how this camino can draw you back and back.

Getting there and costs

Well you can walk! Or you can get a taxi like I did. But RyanAir will bring you to Santiago from almost anywhere in Europe, or to Santander or Pau or Porto or any other starting point you might choose. So will the very reasonable Spanish train system. I got a RyanAir family ticket, whatever that is, from Reus airport south of Barcelona to Santiago and it cost €3.98, all in. Yes. I flew back to Girona from Porto for €5. All in. The various buses and taxis all cost around €5 each. The albergue cost €12 for the night and around the same for the three course meal with a large jug of wine. The hotel was €48 for a triple room. We paid €25 for the coach from Santiago to Porto, about €8 to get to Noia on the coast for our picnic. There are luggage lockers in the bus station and railway station where you can leave anything you don’t want to carry with you, but probably not enough to go round in high season, so that is a consideration. But there are services that will collect your bag from the albergue in the morning and deposit it at your projected lodging, if you are organised enough to know where that is going to be.