Walking the Camino

by Tony Kevin

  I made myself shrug off such negative thoughts, and found a restaurant that advertised its speciality of the house: spicy mussels in white wine. It was quite full, a jolly place and, as we were near the Atlantic, only about 100 kilometres away, I thought it would be safe to try the mussels. They were delicious.

  ***

  Walking out of Ourense very early the next morning, down through the still dark and sleeping city, I met young revellers still coming out of the nightclubs and calling in at all-night cafés for a reviving early-morning coffee. Then I walked across the Roman pedestrian bridge. How these great Roman bridges have survived in Spain! I mentally ticked off those I had walked over: in Córdoba, Mérida, Salamanca, and now Ourense. I walked on through nondescript northern apartment and industrial areas, nearing the looming escarpment. I crossed under a railway line and walked straight up a killingly steep road, about 500 metres’ height gain in two kilometres, onto the high plateau and countryside again. Then I drifted along dreamy country lanes, away from main roads and with hardly any traffic, to a pretty stone humpbacked bridge over the gently flowing little Río Barbantino, into a small village called Ponte Mandrás. I was just ninety-five kilometres from Santiago now — I had passed the 100 mark.

  It was lunchtime. Ponte Mandrás had a friendly tavern, but it had no beds. I had to go on, another six kilometres to Cea, where I knew there would be a refugio and where the local, crusty, wood-fired sourdough bread is justly famous. I stopped in at the bar at Ponte Mandrás for a cheese bocadillo, two hefty slices of fresh pan de Cea with deliciously salty manchego sheep’s cheese in between, and a glass of robust young local red. The good folk in the bar companionably urged me to come back in the evening — it was the local saint’s day, so there was to be música folklorica with Galician bagpipes and dancing. I saw the bandstand already set up in the little plaza, and said I would try to come back. I walked on to Cea, crossing back over the main Ourense–Santiago road, the N525, on the way.

  Somehow, Cea as a place didn’t work for me. I was the only pilgrim in the refugio that night and, unusually, I felt lonely and low-spirited. The hostalero on duty hospitably shared his frugal dinner with me — tomatoes, cold chicken, bread, fruit. I recognised within me a mood I remembered from my younger days of impending separation, the bitter-sweet feeling towards the end of a holiday with a loved one from whom one knows one must soon be parted. I rang up a local taxi and went back to Ponte Mandrás to seek an evening of fun and folk music. The people I had met in the bar at lunchtime were there again, and seemed delighted to see I had returned to their village. We had good conversations over more local wine. I met a vivacious fifty-ish lady who had come back to live in this her native village, from where she had emigrated to Latin America many years ago. She told me that Venezuela had been fun then, but Spain was a better place to live now. This was a theme I heard often from returning emigrants to Latin America: a lot are coming home, voting with their feet, as Spain becomes more politically and economically attractive. The band did not show up — it turned out they were not expected till midnight, as they were much in demand and had several other engagements first. It was going to be a very late-night party in Ponte Mandrás. I couldn’t stay for it — not with thirty-five kilometres’ walking ahead of me the next day. Regretfully, I called up my taxi and went back to sleep in Cea as the villagers of Ponte Mandrás prepared to dance the night away.

  Sunday was quite a hard day, from Cea to A Laxe. Though never very far from the main road, I was hardly aware of it. There was more climbing — up to a plateau at 800 metres. I was walking across the grain of Galicia, north-westwards through a region where all the mountain ridges and intervening river valleys ran south-westwards, and so it was up and down all the way. It’s why the Moors found this region so hard to conquer and hold: geography favoured the defenders.

  As I moved up into the high tableland, a deep mist came down, and I could barely see ten metres ahead. I was now walking with the help of my staff along deep-furrowed, rich-green mossy laneways lined with ancient trees and fieldstone walls, dripping wet in the mist, fern-fronded and boggy underfoot. It was intensely romantic, Tolkien country, where one might expect at any moment to encounter Frodo Baggins fearfully sheltering from the Dark Riders cantering along the unseen crests above. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, the stuff of childhood dreams and Celtic fairytales, and my soul was like a quivering violin string. I was trying desperately to lock this beauty into my memory, taking photo after photo as my heart broke and my eyes filled with tears.

  Finally I came down off the misty high plains, emotionally wrung out but still physically strong, and into the more familiarly beautiful valley and thus into the small village of A Laxe, where I found another pilgrim refugio. The mountain fog had lifted, and so had my mood. A late-afternoon sun was shining warmly. It was a relief after so many empty or near-empty refugios to find that I wasn’t alone here — there were about fifty exuberantly happy high-school teenagers from the Ourense region, girls and boys together doing a short school-holiday pilgrimage walk to Santiago. A lovely bunch of kids, they had filled the hostel to capacity, and I was lucky to be offered a bed next to one of the accompanying young teachers in a packed dormitory. I knew it was going to be a noisy night.

  I headed off to a contemplative dinner in a quiet local bar. The charming young woman there made me up a tasty potato omelette and salad, and with a half-litre of wine I was soon content. She was playing a tape of melodic Galician folk music, and that is how I first came to hear the stunning sound of Luar na Lubre. I wandered back to the refugio, steeling myself for a restless night. But fortune smiled — the casita, the lady caretaker of the refuge who had dropped in to check that everything was alright for the young pilgrims, took one kindly look at me and decided to offer me the special privilege of a locked-access suite for disabled pilgrims. It was a quiet room with a private bathroom, an executive suite all to myself, and I slept like a log.

  The next day was relaxed — no more high hills, just a gently undulating thirty kilometres along quiet paths to the crossing of another big river valley, the Río Ulla, with a bridge and village at Ponte Ulla, my last overnight stop before Santiago. Again, it was beautiful, soft country, mostly off the highway, through villages and farms, across streams, past stables and high-trellis vineyards. The farmers here like to get their vines up high into the sun, and to grow green vegetables during winter in the sheltered spaces underneath the vines. The camino at times itself passed under canopies of trellised vines growing across lanes; they were bursting with bunches of ripening grapes. Harvest was about a month away. The young pilgrims from A Laxe soon passed me — I had left the refugio earlier than them, but they were faster on the path — with many cheery waves and ‘Buen viajes’.

  As I neared Ponte Ulla, the path plunged down into a deep ravine, slanting down towards the river. I could hear the roar of rapids below. Finally a bridge came into view. I crossed it into the village, where I found a truly delightful little family pensión, the Restaurante-Hostal Ríos, in the lee of the bridge. After the past five nights’ sleeping in pilgrim dormitories, I was more than ready for the comfort of a well-appointed hotel bedroom. Luckily, the innkeeper’s wife was happy to do my laundry. I was determined to enjoy my last night on the camino. It was a marvellous dinner, another Galician caldo hearty soup, with delicious cheeses and country bread, and fresh, sweet cherries still in season.

  After dinner I rang home to tell the family I would be arriving in Santiago the next day. Things were not too good at home: Sina told me that all the family had come down with debilitating winter colds, and that this week she had had to take my five-year-old Julius to hospital to check out a severe flu. Now that she knew I was nearly in Santiago, Sina could safely tell me news that she had not wanted to burden me with before: she was feeling increasingly tired and run-down, and she really hoped I could try to come home soon, because all the family missed and needed me. Could I possibl
y change my flight bookings, still nearly two weeks away? Of course, I promised to try. My pilgrim life was drawing to a rapid end as real-life family responsibilities re-emerged.

  The final day, a Tuesday, was just twenty kilometres into Santiago. The camino kept its surprises till the end: it was so hilly that the city did not come into view until I had crested the last of many ridges on that day, a final low saddle about three kilometres from journey’s end. There, suddenly, the city was at last before me, ranged along a hillside that faced me across a final valley. I saw the dreaming fairytale spires of Santiago Cathedral at last, and I felt — what? Joy, pride of achievement, sadness, fear, excitement at the sight, loss — a welter of indescribable emotions flashed rapidly through my mind, in the end settling as a kind of resigned acceptance that this was how it had to be.

  I walked slowly and thoughtfully down the valley, along the ancient cobblestone road, the Calzada de Sar, into the old Sar district of the city, across a dammed stream and then up the hill opposite, through the great walls of the old city, towards the Plaza de Cervantes. There were tourists around me as I walked, and people sitting in cafés, but I hadn’t seen any arriving pilgrims yet because I was coming into the old city from the south, and the main pilgrim route the Vía Frances comes into it from the east. In the hot early afternoon it was uncannily quiet in the city.

  I walked into the Plaza de Cervantes and then, with shocking suddenness, they were all there: hundreds of fellow pilgrims, as if from another planet, streaming into the city in great numbers from the road to the right, the endpoint of the Vía Frances. I knew now, irretrievably, that this wasn’t my special personal pilgrimage any more, that I was only a tiny part of a mass movement that belongs to the whole world. I heard the sounds of Spanish and French and Dutch and German and English in every accent, everyone so brisk and cheerful, purposefully striding into the city towards the cathedral. I felt like Rip Van Winkle who had just woken up, surrounded by so much efficient motion. I mechanically joined the current moving towards the cathedral — people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and nationalities, with packs large and small, with all manner of staffs and hats, with beards, with bicycles, with short hair or long hair or no hair — humanity in all its amazing diversity.

  And suddenly I was there, in the magnificent cathedral plaza, three hours too late for the 11.00 am daily pilgrim Mass, but in time to find the official pilgrims’ office, where I would get my credencial book stamped for the last time, receive my compostela (the certificate of completion of pilgrimage), and be listed for announcement at the next day’s Mass. It was all happening fast; too fast. I mutely passed my credencial across to the woman behind the counter. We had a short conversation; others were waiting in line behind me as she carefully inscribed in pen on the ornate compostela certificate my name in Latin, Dominum Antonium Kevin (every pilgrim gets the courtesy title of dominum, meaning in this case ‘clergyman’), and handed me the precious document in a protective cardboard tube.

  ‘So you’ve really walked all the way here from Granada?’, she asked me.

  ‘Yes, I have’, I said.

  ‘Well done!’

  ‘Thank you, señora.’

  I stepped out into the hard street sunlight, blinking away tears. It was done, yet I still felt no sense of triumph — just another sudden onrush of sadness and loss. I wandered through the town, heading west into the modern commercial and residential district. I had an address for a pensión where I had already made a phone booking from Ponte Ulla. It was pretty down-at-heel, and cost a lot for what it was; but accommodation in Santiago is a sellers’ market in this peak season of pilgrim arrivals two weeks before the feast day of St James, and I was in no mood to fuss over a few more euros.

  I went off to collect my three parcels from the post office, the twelve kilograms of excess weight that I had shed and sent on ahead during the journey, from Madrid Airport, from Córdoba, and from Mérida. Miraculously, all three parcels were waiting patiently for me in the recogida de correos section of the post office. Here in Santiago, post office staff were used to holding pilgrims’ packages for weeks on end. It was fun unpacking them, like meeting old friends again — all those things I thought I would need on the way, but that it turned out I obviously hadn’t needed.

  I found an Internet café, and over the next couple of hours worked to reorganise my flight bookings. All London-to-Sydney flights were packed full, July being the peak month for flights from Europe to Asia and Australia. The first booking I could get — and I was very lucky to do so — was five days away, on Sunday. I rang my good friend Jean, who lives near London, and she kindly invited me to stay with them over the weekend; it would be good to wind down with congenial company in quiet Oxfordshire before the big flight home. I booked a flight from La Coruña to London on Friday, and that left Wednesday and Thursday to fill. I would stay three nights in Santiago, attending the Pilgrims’ Mass the next day, Wednesday, and taking a one-day bus trip to Cape Finisterre on the coast on Thursday. With everything settled at last, I relievedly rang my family with the good news. They were thrilled that I would be coming home in only six days, and their joy began to lift my spirits, too. I had found my main purpose in life again — to try to be a good father to my young children — and my mood of despair finally lifted. God’s wind filled my sails again.

  ***

  The Pilgrims’ Mass the next day was two hours of unalloyed happiness, a thrilling and unforgettable experience that I will never forget. I was glad, as it turned out, that I was attending the Mass on the day after I arrived. Twenty hours and a good overnight sleep in the city was enough time for my volatile end-of-pilgrimage emotions to begin to settle. As I entered the cathedral and found a seat in the main nave near the altar — I went half an hour early at 10.30, and it was just as well that I did, as the cathedral filled quickly — I saw hundreds of pilgrims walking in, still hot and flushed from hurrying to reach Santiago in time, still carrying their rucksacks and hats and staffs. A nun with a guitar was leading rather lugubrious community hymns (I already knew that most modern Spanish church music is drearily forgettable), but the sense of building expectation and excitement in the pews was palpable; it was like waiting for the curtain to rise for a first-night opera performance. Priests in red and white vestments began to gather before the altar, and then suddenly the grand cathedral organ rang out, filling our ears with rich, triumphant blocks of chords, and it was under way at last — our great Pilgrims’ Mass.

  As the Mass got under way, there was no homily, but rather a series of congratulatory announcements from the pulpit. It was all in Spanish, but I got the gist of it. This Mass was to thank and honour us, we pilgrims who had now fulfilled our solemn promise to make a camino to Santiago for the glory of God. We were being congratulated and thanked for our courage, our fortitude, our endurance, and our sacrifice in completing our arduous journeys, which were testament to our sincere love of God. One isn’t used to hearing words of such praise from church pulpits — usually, one is being exhorted to do better. But here was sincere, unqualified praise and admiration for what we had all done. The lady washing clothes back at Rionegro del Puente had got the theology of pilgrimage exactly right

  Suddenly, I realised what this was — it was a welcome home. We were like Olympic athletes being welcomed back into their communities, like a victorious school football team home from winning the trophy, like soldiers home from the wars. No wonder it felt so wonderful — we were actually the heroes on this day! The priest went on to read out the honour roll. On the Camino Frances, so many pilgrims had arrived today: so many from Madrid, so many from Barcelona, so many from France, so many from the Netherlands, so many from Germany … I waited impatiently to hear the announcement … ‘and on the camino from Granada, one pilgrim from Australia’. Like an excited schoolboy, I nudged my friendly Dutch neighbours. ‘That was me! That was me!’ I whispered proudly, and they smiled warmly at me. The Mass passed by
quickly, in a mood of exaltation and joy. Soon it was time for Communion, and we all filed forward slowly for our Bread of Life.

  It wasn’t over yet: still to come was the famous Santiago ceremony of swinging the mighty incense-brazier, the famous Botafumeiro, through the cathedral. A massive brass censer, which must weigh close to a tonne, is lowered on pulley chains from above, the incense is lit inside it, and then it is swung by eight priests pulling on ropes, faster and faster, in wider and wider sweeping arcs up and down the main nave, filling the whole cathedral with the sweet, smoky scent of incense. Finally, the priests stop swinging, and the censer begins to slow down. It takes some time to come to a halt, because it has so much weight and momentum at the end of its long chain, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. At last it is hauled in and stilled, and the pilgrim Mass is ending. The priests file out, and we queue up for our last ritual blessing — to hug the venerated, many-centuries-old statue of a seated Santiago behind the high altar.

  I couldn’t believe I was indulging in this medievalist superstition; but here I was, queuing up with every other pilgrim, waiting my turn to climb up the narrow, winding stairs behind the altar, to pass my hands around the broad shoulders of Santiago from behind, to hug him like an old friend, to whisper to him, ‘We did this together, my friend!’, and finally to float out, out of the great cathedral for the last time, into the bright sunlight of a Santiago afternoon. My years had melted away from me; I felt young and strong and fresh again, ready for a new world. My pilgrimage was finally, exuberantly, over.