El  Camino de Santiago de Compostela

     Los peregrinos - The pilgrims  


        The scallop symbol of el Camino

Mid September, four of us Donne, Mary Ann, Anne and myself took the long trip to Paris, jumped on the TGV (French train system ) and eventually ended in  St Jean Pied de Port, for the start of the Camino Frances

A journey of some 800 kms over the Pyrenees and across the north of Spain,  following a well trodden and waymarked path some eight centuries old. We had planned and trained for this for some months and was blessed by sunny weather for the start of our journey.

The scenery through this  mountainous area, is reminiscent of NZ high country pasture with rock outcrops and meadows with stands of beech forests. To ease us in slowly I had planned a relatively easy first 10 days averaging 15 kms per day with just  8kms for the first day as it was all uphill.   On our first day, despite the strenuous 8 km climb,  we arrived well  before lunch, stayed at a mountain lodge at Orisson, still in French territory.  There were probably forty odd pilgrims that night and we briefly introduced ourselves after a community meal, so a great spirit of camaraderie was formed and many of those we met that night we would meet again along the way.

The second day was an equally strenuous climb up to the pass and an equally steep and long descent into Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the border. Roncesvalles has a new albergue ( hostel ).  The  dormitories are capable of sleeping over a hundred pilgrims .

The pilgrim meal in an a nearby hotel for 9 euros was  great  as we were starving after a full day walk . Two little trout per person for the main course was a treat. It was also the season for walnuts and the grounds of the albergue had a mature walnut tree next to the laundry line with any amount of walnuts for the picking off the ground.

The next few days were uneventful but pleasant as we found our rhythm and settled down to life as a pilgrim getting up at daybreak and tucking into a quick breakfast before hitting the road. Afternoons were spent in doing personal laundry and resting our weary limbs. For the more energetic a short exploration of the village or town we happened to be in was a pleasant way to fill in the hours before sunset.

We attended evening masses whenever they were available and while we did not understand a word of the readings we were familiar enough with the format to soon figure out what was being said.

                                          Look, hands free umbrella

Day four was quite an eventful day as Donne fell heavily and ‘ twisted’ her ankle,  She managed to hobble a kilometre to the nearest road while Anne and I went ahead to the nearest village to organise a taxi to pick her up.  We were then some 19 kms from Pamplona, the town made famous by Hemingway and also for the annual running of the bulls.  

Took Donne to  Pamplona,  found a  decent hotel with a lift and within walking distance of the old city, found  her a pair of crutches so she could at least move short distances by herself.  As it happened virtually across the road from the hotel was a shop specialising in orthopaedic equipment and we bought a pair of crutches for 40 euros which is still serving her now,  some two months later. (Hopefully she will wean herself off them soon). 

As an engineer I dislike coincidences and if you were to look for a common shop say a supermarket or a newstand in a strange town it probably will take you 15 minutes to find one a couple of blocks away on average. A shop that sells say acupuncture needles or marine chandlery is considerably rarer and if you did not know where to go it is pointless walking round in circles. Where would you place a shop that specialised in wheelchairs , patella supports, knee straps, crutches etc. Certainly on the same street, across the road was too good to be true.  Think of your own city, do you know where to go to get a pair of crutches and how far away is it. I experienced this uncanny luck not once but on a number of occasions. 

Met a hostel owner later, somewhere along the way, who told me that if your friend fell and broke her leg, she was not meant to complete the Camino this time. If you are meant to complete it , the means will be provided.

Our  daily routine changed as we then needed to arrange transport each day for Donne to our anticipated destination, and we needed to ring ahead to make sure that there was suitable accommodation for her, ( no three storey high rooms with no lifts). We did this for the better part of a week thinking that the ankle would eventually get better and she would be able to gradually partake of the walk. However after  5 days when there was no improvement we decided that it was best to visit a hospital and we did this in Logroño. 

The good news is the public health care system in Logrono is excellent while there was a wait it was not for too many hours and they managed to find a South American doctor that spoke English.

The bad news was the X rays showed the leg was broken in two places, both the Tibia and the Fibula were broken and an operation was required to pin them back. The surgeon gave her two choices, operate in Spain right away or put her in a temporary cast and put her on a plane back to NZ. After some thought she decided to take the latter as language and home support would be better in NZ . So the next day and a half was spent contacting the Travel Insurance company, transmitting and receiving forms documentation, air travel arrangement etc and finally putting her onto a 5 hour taxi ride to Barcelona and then a very long flight back to NZ.  Amazingly there was no charge for all the work done in the hospital in Logrono.

                Anne walking backwards down hill, Leo walking forwards.

Some what subdued, we continued our journey wondering what was in store ahead for us three. We soon reached  La Rioja the land of red wine and we walked for several days through vineyards laden with round sweet black grapes all waiting to be harvested, during those days it was easy to quench your hunger or thirst as sweet juicy grapes were just a stone’s throw away.

These gave way to olive orchards and while these were laden with olives we knew they were not suitable for eating off the trees. However some kind souls had planted almond trees along the Way and there were any amount of almonds for the taking if you could be bothered to sit down and crack them with a stone.

 n these early days the climate was still warm and hot by early afternoon. Still we plodded on and it wasn’t long before we were in the Mesetas, long treeless days across stony fields, now brown after the wheat was harvested. 

One of the many delights on the Camino was sharing a common journey with strangers with a common purpose from literally all walks of life. We met pilgrims from far flung Iceland, China, Peru and they considered us just as exotic from far off NZ.  Approximately half the pilgrims were Spanish and there were a surprising number of Koreans on the Way. The Camino is gaining popularity once again after it faded in the 15^th century and latest figures will probably show that almost a quarter of a million pilgrims took part in the journey this year. However this pales against the half million in the 12^th Century.

A surprising number of pilgrims were doing it for the second time and some were multiple times pilgrims. Perhaps there is some truth in the french word ‘coquine’ which means cheeky but is derived from the french word coquille which means Seashell. All pilgrims wear a Scallop shell to denote that they are pilgrims and this entitles them to special discounts and even free food and lodging in some places.

We were now well into October and the farmers were frantically harvesting their various crops, olive harvesting machines, grape harvesters, maize combine harvesters and hay baling machines could be seen charging around. Then the skies opened one afternoon and torrential rain and wind swept across the plains of Spain. Our packs stayed dry under our ponchos and we had all our clothes in waterproof pouches as well inside so it was not too bad although from the knees down everything was drenched. 

Most pilgrims wear some form of walking or hiking shoes with socks and these became squelching footwear under these conditions. The Teva Sandals which I wore for the entire Camino were in their element. No socks to get wet and built for wading through streams they were just as non skid in the wet.

Most of the villages we passed through or stayed in, would have a resident population of less than a thousand. These farming villages were built at a time when labour was needed to work the farms and hence the size of the villages and their respective churches. With industrialization, the young have drifted away in search of work and only the old are left behind. We hardly saw any children or babies.  Eventually only those directly involved with farming and or serving pilgrims would remain. 

A much needed lunch  and toilet break.  No public toilets in the whole  way.

As we got nearer to Santiago de Compostela our end point, we were also approaching the end of Autumn and there was a decided chill in the air. The number of pilgrims were  less and a number of dormitories were shutting for the season.

Leon is the largest city on the Camino, a bustling town of perhaps 200,000 residents and we decided not to run the risk of walking along side the busy roads into and out of the city, so like many other pilgrims we jumped onto a bus for the last 20 kms into town and did likewise when we left. 

West of Leon is a range of mountains known as Montes de Leon and with such an innocuous name we paid little attention to it. The climb up was gentle enough but with autumn comes inclement weather and we had a couple of wet blustery days that made walking less pleasant.

The descent was another  story altogether, steep and narrow down a watercourse which was running due to the earlier rains it was treacherous and slow going.  The scenery was spectacular though, with mature oaks and chestnut trees and with the autumn rains, mushrooms were sprouting everywhere.  There were also meadows of wild crocus flowers providing a violet polka dot on a green carpet. 

As a foreigner we shied away from trying the wild mushrooms as we had no idea which ones were edible but we saw many locals collecting and we were fortunate one morning to be sitting down with a local pilgrim that had collected a bagful of mushrooms and had them fried up for morning tea  in an omelette. They were indeed  scrumptious. We saw signs of wild boar rooting around, no doubt for other edible roots or perhaps even truffle.

The descent took us eventually to the town of Ponferrada where we met up with Lawrence (Anne’s brother) His teaching schedule allowed him to join us for the last 200km and we were happy to see him , Anne especially so as he brought an additional 200 Dilmah teabags for her. 

The oat and wheat fields of the meseta were now behind us and with the rolling hills farmers were mainly grazing cattle for milk to make into local cheeses. These cattle are shifted daily from their pasture back to their milking shed  along the Camino.  In this area the paths are often cobbled and usually sandwiched between two ancient stonewalls.  So when faced with an advancing herd of drooling cattle there is little one can do but stand still and allow them to squeeze past. Pilgrims from a rural background are used to large beasts but some of the Korean girls from Seoul were freaking  out at the close encounter.

Just one last mountain range stood between us and Galicia and our destination , Santiago de Compostela.  The pasture gave way to oak and chestnut forests, and as our timing was perfect, it was chestnut harvest time, so the forests were literally raining chestnuts. We had no means to roast them so Anne took to eating them raw and said they were delicious, personally I prefer them roasted.

We had read that it often rains in this area as the Atlantic weather systems roll in and dump on the Galician mountains but we had a week of spectacular summer weather in late Autumn, so  unusual was it that it featured in the evening news for several days.

By now our legs and back had gotten use to the daily grind and often you would walk without noticing that you were carrying a backpack. In this area as it is more hilly, enterprising locals offer horses,  to assist with the journey. They add quite a bit of colour to the  Way and also by way of their droppings. We saw donkeys as well, but these were used only to carry the backpacks not the pilgrims.

We met an Irish nun belonging to the Poor Clares the complementary order to the Franciscans and she was walking in a full brown heavy habit. So many of the clergy now travel in mufti that you would not be able to tell them apart from the laity. As her pace was as slow as ours we saw her on several occasions and eventually in Santiago as well. Where there were convents she would stay with the convents but in many towns there were not and she would stay in Albergues or Xuntas as they are called in this region. We dined one evening in the same café/restaurant that she did and later she told us that when she went to pay someone else had paid her bill. What a lovely gesture.

The spirit of the Camino is indeed alive and I could relate half a dozen other stories on the same vein.

Hooray, the last 100 kms.  A sign we looked forward with great longing. The end is near.

Galicia is colder and wetter than the rest of Spain, it is also closer to the sea. So hearty soups and seafood are a feature of this area. Caldo Galicia is a thick soup of cabbage and potatoes boiled until both have become nearly mush. It doesn’t sound like much but is surprisingly tasty and certainly warms you up after a long hard cold day. Another specialty in this area is Pulpo a Feira, boiled Octopus, sliced and sprinkled generously with olive oil and paprika. The trick is somehow they are able to get the Octopus tender.

Spanish is a surprisingly orderly language and unlike English the rules once followed have few exceptions. It is much easier to listen to and decipher than French and so if a new word is spoken to you, even if you do not understand it you could spell it reasonably comfortably and therefore look it up.   As we were going to be in Spain for a couple of months my Plan A was to get Donne to do Spanish as a subject as part of her course at Auckland University.  Since she  unfortunately  fell and left us Plan B was to buy a Spanish Dictionary which I did at a second hand book fair for 6 euros and swot up in the evenings. Surprisingly most of the villagers, despite catering to thousands of pilgrims speak little English so a little Spanish is essential to ask for accommodation, directions and to order drinks and meals. Bus tickets are better as most counter staff speak some English. Necessity is a wonderful teacher and while I still need to work on my conjugations with my verb endings I now have enough vocabulary to be understood and to comprehend all things pertaining to tourism and travel. It's handy when Anne asks you to translate the menu and the item happens to be morcilla (blood pudding) or callo (tripe) two rather popular items on the Spanish menu.

The last 100 kms into Santiago is also the most crowded . Throngs of pilgrims just walk the last 100kms. Many fly into Santiago and bus out to Sarria, and walk back into Santiago. Why 100kms? The Confratenity of St James awards a certificate to pilgrims that have walked the last 100kms or cycled the last 200kms.

From 5 kms away, on Mont de Gozo one can catch a glimpse of the great Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela and soon one is walking alongside highways into the great city. At noon each day there is a pilgrim mass where they read out the countries that the pilgrims have come from and their respective starting points.

Once a week on Friday and on Feast days and Holy Days they re-enact the tradition of fumigating the Cathedral with incense. Six men hoist a giant incense burner (botafumeiro) and this is swung in a huge pendulum over the heads of the pilgrims from nave to nave. The tradition stems from a bygone era when pilgrims did not wash or had little opportunity to do so and the stench in the cathedral was unbearable.  The stone columns of the Nave are stained black from centuries of smoke from this activity.

We stayed for four nights in the Hospitaleria St Martins, directly opposite the Cathedral across a square. Once it was  a major seminary now a hotel for pilgrims and tourists.  It was also All Saints Day and the Cathedral was packed for every mass. A day after we arrived the heavens open and it rained for several days with snow to low levels. Our hearts went out to the pilgrims caught in the mountains we had just left.

Our walking pilgrimage now over we hired a car to explore the area and to visit Cape Finisterre where legend has it that the body of St James was brought ashore, many purists pilgrim walk the last 88kms to Cape Finisterre and indeed we saw a number on the road as we drove along.

One final ritual of the 21^st century. Mary Ann and Anne went to weigh themselves in a local pharmacy. I wasn’t party to the ‘before’ weight and  likewise the ‘after’ weight.