The Pilgrim's Way (9): Somewhere And Nowhere

The real traveller finds sustenance in equivocation, he is torn between embracing and letting go, and the wrench of disengagement is the essence of his existence, he belongs nowhere.

CEES NOOTEBOOM Roads to Santiago

Santiago Cathedral.

The emotions experienced on arrival may be unexpected and confusing. What am I supposed to feel? Why, after climbing the cathedral steps and looking out over the Praza do Obradoiro, do I feel a strange, paradoxical mixture of excitement and disappointment, climax and anti-climax? Why don't I feel as ecstatic as that pilgrim over there, lying prostrate before the altar? What do I do, where do I go next? Is this the end or another beginning, an arrival or another departure, the destination or just another stop along the Way?

Feelings come and feelings go — there's no point in trying to pin them down or analyse them too deeply. Expectations are merely that — expectations. Illusory and imaginary, desires belong to the past and hardly ever correspond with a present reality. Accept the feelings, look at them as if you're standing on a riverbank and watching them float by like driftwood, be curious about them, perhaps amused by them, but don't take them too seriously, don't be disturbed or overwhelmed by them. Feelings come , feelings go — just that. Accept them, whatever they are. Then you may feel a kind of calm, an inner peace.

The Solitary Walker arrives at Monte do Gozo.

I wrote this about my final few days on the Camino in December 2007:

Finally I reached Monte do Gozo which overlooks the outskirts of Santiago. (In Galego, the Galician language, this is Mon Xoi, and means Mount Joy.) I was greeted there by Jan, a retired schoolteacher from Australia. She asked how far I'd walked. I replied: 1000 miles. She congratulated me on my achievement. We took photos of each other. It was an emotional moment.

You can't see Santiago's cathedral, the tangible goal of my 1000-mile journey, until you're almost upon it. I walked downhill from the modern statue on Monte do Gozo, over motorway and railway, and through the suburb of San Lázaro, where there used to be a leprosy hospital in the 12th century. I scurried over the ring road and into the Rúa dos Concheiros — this name being a reference to pilgrims wearing the concha, the scallop shell symbol of Saint James. It was late in the afternoon and getting dark quickly. Minimal, tasteful Christmas decorations swung over the path. People thronged the streets. It was a Saturday. The shops and bars would be open till very late. I hurried across the tiny Praza San Pedro, Saint Peter's Square, and through the famous Porta do Camino into the old medieval city. And finally into the Praza do Obradoiro, the Golden Square, which lies at the foot of Santiago Cathedral's glorious western façade. I climbed the steps up to the west door. I had arrived. I was exhausted but elated. I made some phone calls. I sent some texts. But mostly I just looked and wondered. And almost cried at the beauty of it all.

As I've written before, this final stage of the Camino, the stage between León and Santiago, is traditionally and mystically known as The Way Of Glory. And everything really did seem like glory to me that evening.

I wanted to place my hand on the Tree of Jesse, the central marble column of the cathedral's Portico de Gloria, the Entrance of Glory. Unfortunately it was barricaded off — presumably for renovation or repair. However I didn't really mind. It's not the time-honoured routine of pilgrim ritual that matters in the end. It's what you feel inside.

The next day, a Sunday, just before the 12-noon pilgrim mass, the west face of the cathedral looked wonderful in the sunlight. During mass the Botafumeiro, the celebrated giant incense burner, wasn't swung from its ropes and pulleys. Apparently they do that much less nowadays. I wasn't really disappointed. I met up with some of my pilgrim friends afterwards — Ezequiel, Kristin, Daniel, Hiroshi, Marlis, Sebastiane, Marco, Philippe. We all hugged. We were visibly moved. And glad to have arrived at our spiritual destination.

They were all going to eat in the bar at the Hostal Suso. But somehow I didn't feel like going with them — not at that particular moment. I wanted to be alone, to take in the particular atmosphere, to untangle the complicated thoughts and emotions which had suddenly woven themselves around my mind and heart. I stepped outside the cathedral into the cold and wintry air.

Santiago Cathedral.

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from . . .

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

TS ELIOT From Little Gidding in Four Quartets

All by Myself

I've leaned so much

On conchas and flechas amarillas,

I fear I may be lost

Without them.

So now

(Guided by no maps or marker stones,

Pricking no shelled and arrowed way,

No trail angel appearing mysteriously

At a crossroads in the middle of a prairie

To point the right path)

I'll try contact

Some benign spirit deep within

For comfort and counsel;

Though along the Way I learned,

All by myself, with sweat and tears,

That the more I'm lost, the more I'm found,

And that all roads lead to somewhere and to nowhere.

THE SOLITARY WALKER From Raining Quinces

To be continued . . .

The Pilgrim's Way (8): Arrival In Santiago

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.  MARCEL PROUST

Jennifer Lash — novelist, painter, and mother of the actor Ralph Fiennes — wrote her book On Pilgrimage in the late 1980s/early 1990s while in remission from breast cancer. She lost her fight with the disease on 28 December 1993 at the age of 55. This book remains one of my favourite books about pilgrimage. The following extract is taken from its final pages:

One is always looking. Perhaps finding is simply looking further. 'Looking' is life. Maybe pilgrimage puts that 'looking' into keener focus.

Just as at Rocamadour and Vézelay, it was sad to be in Santiago for the last time. It is easy to try too hard to see and feel. To be filled with excitement and longing, and miss the point completely.

I wondered what I had been looking for. Certainly the adventure with cancer had been an impetus. There had been some sense of urgency after that, urgency towards a deeper understanding of oneself; the nature and opportunity of one's being. Obviously quality of life depends on the kind of trigger you choose.

Carl Jung once said, 'To my mind it is more important that an idea exists, than that it is true.'

Santiago certainly exists, the place itself and the myth of the wandering apostle. All these routes, all those shells, all those shrines. Botticelli may have conceived Venus, born out of a scallop shell, but the figure of James, without any foundation in fact, only the roots of legend and myth, was born so many years earlier with his shells intact. A bright star, a shepherd, and the birth of an archetype. James, close to Christ, but still simply one who is 'on the Way'. Everyman. The Wayfarer. The Pilgrim. When it suited the times and the culture, he was turned into a soldier, devastator of the infidel. Today he has shaken back down again into being a simple pilgrim force.

There is such freedom in the myth of James and in the final celebration of the cathedral itself. A healing feast for the psyche . . . Like some extravagant theatre of texture and imagination, its [the myth's] lack of certainty is its strength.

I met a very laid-back Dutchman who said, 'Santiago is a circus, the Benidorm of the blind mind.'

Maybe only the 'blind mind' dares to acknowledge the extreme circus of the human condition. Our mad mix of images, feelings, hopes and fears. In the cathedral, high above the ambulatory, cherubs wave phallic fronds from between their legs, acorns are at every tip, every so often they burst into flower. Huge, sultry angels lazily guard the canopy of this womb-cave, where altar and saint glow with a full, wide-awake welcome. A very positive and individuated James is the happy focus of anyone who enters the cathedral, and gathered round him there is the triumphant expression of all those wild, rich feelings that may lurk as threat and disease, if they remain unclaimed and hidden.

Maybe 'blind mind' and 'scholarship suspended' allow the psyche sufficient freedom to connect to this burst of human and sacred inheritance . . .

It is not enough to seek and care; to pay lip service to all manner of ideals. Real witness is what counts. Why is it so difficult? It is something to do with leaps in the dark. Recognising that truth is hidden. But the transformation towards truth is something else. It is practice and diligence as Lama Jigmé said. Referring to faith and belief Thomas Merton wrote, 'We do not see first and then act; we act then see.'

JENNIFER LASH On Pilgrimage

Everyone's arrival in Santiago is uniquely different, as these two paragraphs from William Dalrymple show:

In medieval times, the pilgrim to Rome came down from the heights of Tuscany to be rewarded with a view of the city's magnificent walls looping over the seven hills. The approach to Jerusalem was an equally suitable climax to so long a journey: the last wonderful stretch of road from Emmaus threading up through the pine trees and oleanders.

In comparison, the first view of Santiago was always unremarkable; even the Romans seemed to have been unimpressed, for the river you cross is named Lavacolla, derived from the Latin 'arse-wipe'. Yet to arrive at any destination which you have longed for has its rewards. I was in a fairly bad way. I was unshaven and none of my clothes had been washed for a week. I stank. More seriously, a blister on the ball of my right foot had gone bad and I had a pronounced Quasimodo limp. Just to arrive, cease walking, seemed enough.

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE A Pilgrim's Progress Ends from The Spectator 8 June 1991

There is no right or wrong method of arrival, no feelings we ought to have — there is only arrival, there are only feelings.

Arrival, like origin, is a mythical place. REBECCA SOLNIT.

To be continued . . .

Reasons To Walk The Camino: (3) A Harmless Obsession

A few years ago I was sitting in the pub at Kirk Yetholm on the final night of a three-week hike along the Pennine Way, that magnificent walk of hill, dale and moorland along England's backbone. My drinking companion was a fellow walker and hiker who had also just completed the trail. I think his name was John, but I can't remember for certain. In the time-honoured way of those who confide in strangers they've just met and will never meet again, he told me his life story.

John was a merchant seaman and spent half the year doing backbreaking work on cargo and container ships. Though he'd travelled the oceans of the world, he didn't really feel he'd seen the world properly, seen it as closely as he'd like to have seen it. During a voyage, shore leave was limited, and most of the time he had his nose to the grindstone. For the rest of the year he squandered the cash he'd earned in a non-stop merry-go-round of drink, drugs, call girls and expensive resort hotels. He was young and fancy-free. This went on for many years. Then, one morning, as he lay by a hotel pool in Monte Carlo recovering from a hangover, he realised in a blinding flash that not only was he bored, but that he was totally wasting his life. He suddenly recalled a friend once mentioning the existence of an ancient network of pathways criss-crossing Europe, pilgrim trails which led either to Jerusalem, Rome or Santiago de Compostela. He decided that in future he'd spend all his spare time following these paths and other long-distance trails. And that, for all I know, is what he's doing still.

The trail became an obsession for him, in the manner of an addict giving up one drug for another, like an alcoholic radically converting into a teetotal, bible-thumping evangelist. Though John's new addiction is, I think, quite a benign one — healthy, wholesome, laudable even. I must admit I have this Camino addiction myself, latent at present, but liable to burst forth at any moment. A harmless obsession, to be sure; though, be warned, it is no panacea for life's problems.

There have been lots of books written about the Camino — many of them mediocre, pretentious, full of hyperbole and romantic claims. Increasing numbers of pilgrims flock to walk it each year — especially the Camino Francés route — full of expectation. But, at the end of the day, despite its uniqueness, its history, its religious resonances, its popularity, its promise of friendship and spiritual enlightenment, its cheap and hospitable accommodation — it is just a path, after all. (I'm not talking it down. I love the Camino. I'm just saying that there are lots of paths, and any one of them could bring illumination.) I myself — contrary to the experience of many — had a feeling of confusion and anti-climax on reaching Santiago. Perhaps the goal is the path itself, and the meaning lies in the walking. As Bashō wrote: The journey itself is home.

The Camino is not all sweetness and light. As in life itself, the good, the bad and the ugly punish their feet along its straight lines and sinuous curves. You'll traverse monotonous, grain-growing flatlands, which test your mental stamina. You'll walk stretches next to busy highways, which almost drive you insane. You'll meet bandits as well as angels, bores as well as beautiful people. You'll meet tramps, saints, poets, escapees from troubled relationships, thieves, vagabonds, seekers of all kinds. And you can't get away from them at night like you could at home, because they're right there in the dormitory, snoring beside you. However, most people you'll encounter — both natives and pilgrims alike — are perfectly nice, friendly, helpful and generous, tolerant about your sketchy grasp of Spanish, and ready and willing to share their bowl of soup or pasta with you. Don't go with preconceived ideas, don't go expecting too much, don't believe all the books and blogs and films about it. Just go with an open mind and see for yourself. Buen Camino!

Embracing And Letting Go

Santiago Cathedral, Spain. Image: Wikimedia Commons

The real traveller finds sustenance in equivocation, he is torn between embracing and letting go, and the wrench of disengagement is the essence of his existence, he belongs nowhere.

Read the full quotation from Cees Nooteboom's book Roads To Santiago in my new Turnstone post.

Vía de la Plata

That day, as I remember,
there was rain, yes, skyfulls of it,
streams becoming rivers
and all the bridges swept away.

And between each deluge
a thousand birds sang in a thousand holm oaks.
Never had birdsong sounded sweeter
than all those finches, larks and linnets
chorusing an early spring.

And the cranes, what about the cranes?
Hidden at first, then lifting from a field,
cross-shaped, gliding with scarcely a wingbeat,
their clattering calls fainter and fainter.

I followed a full moon to Cañaveral
by a lonely path on a high plateau,
lurching down a gully through the dark,
the batteries of my headtorch failing.

Loud martial music blared —
I don’t know why, or where it came from —
across the town, and then stopped suddenly.
A ghostly silence in the long main street.
Then clamour of voices in Hostal Málaga.

Opening doors, I walked from one
acutely etched experience to
another. The bedroom cold and narrow
as a coffin, the radiator not working
as usual, the cramped bed suited
to some ascetic saint, the dusty curtains
rough and stiff as a hairshirt.

Escaping to the comfort of a bar,
delighting as ever in the role
of the mysterious stranger,
I gazed hawk-like, fooling myself
I saw the meaning behind the meaning
of the bread, the wine, the pork steak
and the fried potatoes, the kind stares
of the drunks on their stools
who never seemed to get drunk
but gawked over their San Miguels
with curiosity and, I felt —
after I’d gulped one or two
large vinos — with love.

Later that night, in my cold
and miserable room, I put my arms
around myself, as if I were
holding a woman, then drifted into dreams
of rain, empty roads, and stepping stones
submerged in rivers and swollen streams.

(The Vía de la Plata is one of the Spanish pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.)

Walking Pilgrimages (9)

Santiago Cathedral

The idea of pilgrimage is much older than Christianity, but always it has been an expression of the same two main concepts: that of making a pilgrimage by travelling to a specific geographical site, and that of being on a perpetual pilgrimage; the journey that is life itself. Both are the pursuit of a greater good than mere existence, and both involve discomfort and hardship, if not a much overworked word, peril. To view life as a pilgrimage is, in part, a description of life as a result of living it... MARGARET PAWLEY Prayers For Pilgrims



Camino,Spain

I'm just the latest in a very long tradition of pilgrims, to Rome and many other places, for any of a dozen reasons. My own reason for pilgrimage was gratitude for a favour granted. Those who went before me have all had reasons of their own. We've taken to the road with causes, and results, as varied as our routes. DENNIS LARKIN A Walk To Rome



Camino,Spain



Pilgrimage, the journey to a distant sacred goal, is found in all the great religions of the world. It is a journey both outwards, to new, strange, dangerous places, and inwards, to spiritual improvement, whether through increased self-knowledge or through the braving of physical dangers. RICHARD BARBER Pilgrimages

Camino, Spain

In Richard Barber's book Pilgrimages he describes many different pilgrimage traditions throughout the world: Jewish, Christian and Moslem pilgrimages to Jerusalem; the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca; Christian routes to Canterbury and Rome, to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, to Fatima in Portugal, to Lourdes in France, and to many other European shrines; the Hindu pilgrimage to Benares in India; and Buddhist pilgrimages to shrines and stupas in India, China and Tibet. (The Buddha's ashes are distributed among eight different stupas, or dome-shaped cairns, in India.)

Camino, Spain



I myself have trekked three pilgrimage routes: one from Le Puy in France to Santiago in Spain; one from Arles in France to Puente la Reina in Spain; and one from Seville along the Via de la Plata to La Gudina, just short of Santiago. That's a total distance of more than 2000 miles. (Links to these walks are in my sidebar.)

Camino, Spain



A Glass Of Rainwater, Please!

Empty street café scene in the Rúa Mayor, Santiago... Could it be raining, I wonder?

By the way, if you visit YouTube, and search for 'spanishmeseta', you'll be able to see the larger, slightly sharper YouTube versions of my last 3 Vía de la Plata videos...

And, also by the way, I've just made a hearty chorizo, chickpea and lentil soup. You don't think I might be yearning again for Spain already, do you..?

The Birth Of An Archetype

To my mind it is more important that an idea exists than that it is true. CARL JUNG

Santiago certainly exists, the place itself and the myth of the wandering apostle. All those routes, all those shells, all those shrines. Botticelli may have conceived Venus, born out of a scallop shell, but the figure of James, without any foundation in fact, only the roots of legend and myth, was born so many years earlier with his shells intact. A bright star, a shepherd, and the birth of an archetype. James, close to Christ, but still, simply one who is 'on the Way'. Everyman. The Wayfarer. The Pilgrim. When it suited the times and the culture, he was turned into a soldier, devastator of the infidel. Today he has shaken back down again into being a simple, pilgrim force.

There is such freedom in the myth of James and in the final celebration of the cathedral itself. A healing feast for the psyche. The present Pope has been to Santiago, but the myth led to the Pope. The myth retains its freedom. Like some extravagant theatre of texture and imagination, its lack of certainty is its strength.

From On Pilgrimage: A Time To Seek (1991) by JENNIFER LASH

The Rain In Spain

So my Camino is done. I'd like to have walked the whole way, but in A Gudiña (which lies just inside Galicia and is fourth-fifths the distance between Seville and Santiago) I decided to battle with the elements no longer. I'd had snow which had completely blocked the Camino for a day. I'd had rain - persistent rain bucketing down day and night - which meant swollen streams had to be crossed. The stepping stones - if there were any stepping stones - were often deeply submerged. So much of the time I had wet feet - not a good combination with the extreme cold. I don't mind too much wet weather if it's warm, or cold weather if its all sun and blue skies. But the cold and wet together, often with a head wind too? No, thanks! (My gear had generally been OK, but my boots were deteriorating - and letting in water - and my overtrousers were also letting in water. I'd bought the trousers far too cheaply, and they weren't adequately rainproofed - a lesson to be learnt there!)

The weather forecast for this whole last week was uniformly awful for much of Spain. The country is in the grips of one of its worst winters for years. It had been deluged with rain in December and much of January - particularly in the south - and now this was continuing throughout February. Snowfall had been unusually heavy in the north, and it had even snowed in parts of the south which never normally see any snow. There had been bad storms and flooding in places like Cádiz, Jerez and the Canaries. Bridges had collapsed. Motorways had been shut for a while. Homes had been destroyed. The mighty Guadalquiver river had burst its banks east of Seville.

It was through such saturated countryside that I walked, so it was never easy from the start. Twice early on I had to turn back from rivers which were unfordable and seek an alternative route by road. I would spend a large part of each day just concentrating on the path before me - avoiding the deep, muddy bits where I'd sink in up to my ankles, skirting huge pools by clinging precariously onto the barbed wire fences or stone walls which edged the track. (Read Rebekah Scott on the Spanish weather here and here.)

So, in A Gudiña, I took a train to Ourense, and looked out over the lovely Galician countryside from the railway carriage window - little bright green fields enclosed by stone walls, densely forested hills. And rain. Lots of it! I spent a night in Ourense...

... and the next day took another train to Santiago. (In Santiago I heard there'd been a landslide in Ourense and that the river there was now dangerously high.) Though not even the rain could dampen my spirits on seeing Santiago Cathedral again. It's magnificent. One of my favourite buildings anywhere. Its Baroque western facade is one of great religious and architectural sights of Europe. Some cathedrals leave one feeling cold and unemotional - the interiors are so vast and ornate. Yet despite its hugh dimensions - inside it's high but narrow - this cathedral has a feeling of intimacy.

Here's my last scallop shell - set in a stone slab in the Plaza del Obradoiro, the impressive square which lies at the foot of the cathedral steps. I'd walked 800 km from Seville to A Gudiña over 40 days. That's an average of 20 km a day (though 7 of these days were for rest and exploration - when I'd stayed an extra day or 2 in historic cities such as Mérida or Cáceres, Salamanca or Zamora. I'm very glad I did this. It's not good to rush on all the time.) So my actual walking average - over 33 proper walking days - was just over 24 km a day. My walking speed averaged out at about 4 km an hour (5 km an hour if the going was good and I felt like pushing on; 3 km an hour if I was taking lots of photographs and felt like sauntering and stopping to look at things.)

The Botafumeiro Swings

In Santiago Cathedral

a rush of incense
the botafumeiro
swings

here
the old world ends
we'll see

what a new world
brings
if angels

have feet of clay
then i
have wings

Santiago: Field Of Stars

I wanted to place my hand on the Tree of Jesse, the central marble column of the cathedral's Portico de Gloria, the Entrance of Glory. Unfortunately it was barricaded off - presumably for renovation or repair. However I didn't really mind. It's not the time-honoured routine of pilgrim ritual that matters in the end. It's what you feel inside.

The next day, a Sunday, just before the 12 noon pilgrim mass, the west face of the cathedral looked wonderful in the sunlight. During mass the Botafumeiro, the celebrated giant incense burner, wasn't swung from its ropes and pulleys. Apparently they do that much less nowadays. I wasn't really disappointed. I met up with some of my pilgrim friends afterwards - Ezequiel, Kristin, Daniel, Hiroshi, Marlis, Sebastiane, Marco, Philippe. We all hugged. We were visibly moved. And glad to have arrived at our spiritual destination.

They were all going to eat in the bar at the Hostal Suso. But somehow I didn't feel like going with them - not at that particular moment. I wanted to be alone, to take in the particular atmosphere, to untangle the complicated thoughts and emotions which had suddenly woven themselves around my mind and heart. I stepped outside the cathedral into the cold and wintry air.

The Way Of Glory

You can't see Santiago's cathedral, the tangible goal of my 1000 mile journey, until you're almost upon it. I walked downhill from the modern statue on the Monte del Gozo, over motorway and railway, and through the suburb of San Lázaro, where there used to be a leprosy hospital in the 12th century. I scurried over the ring road and into the Rúa dos Concheiros - this name being a reference to pilgrims wearing the concha, the scallop shell symbol of Saint James. It was late in the afternoon and getting dark quickly. Minimal, tasteful Christmas decorations swung over the path. People thronged the streets. It was a Saturday. The shops and bars would be open till very late. I hurried across the tiny Praza San Pedro, Saint Peter's Square, and through the famous Porta do Camino into the old medieval city. And finally into the Praza Obradoiro, the Golden Square, which lies at the foot of Santiago Cathedral's glorious western façade. I climbed the steps up to the west door. I had arrived. I was exhausted but elated. I made some phone calls. I sent some texts. But mostly I just looked and wondered. And almost cried at the beauty of it all.

As I've written before, this final stage of the Camino, the stage between Leon and Santiago, is traditionally and mystically known as The Way Of Glory. And everything really did seem like glory to me that evening.

Mount Joy

Finally I reached the Monte del Gozo which overlooks the outskirts of Santiago. (In Galego, the Galician language, this is Mon Xoi, and means Mount Joy.) I was greeted there by Jan, a retired schoolteacher from Australia. She asked how far I'd walked. I replied: 1000 miles. She congratulated me on my achievement. We took photos of each other. It was an emotional moment.

Santiago Dreaming

I'd spent the night of Friday 14 December in the albergue at Ribadiso. It was beautifully situated by the river bridge at the village entrance. It had received an award for its environmentally-friendly design. In the summer it must be very busy with pilgrims. That night I was the only occupant. The nearby café-bar was shut so I made do with eating leftovers from my backpack: bits of stale bread and cheese, an orange. The night was icy cold, the ink-black sky dotted with stars. I struggled to keep warm and pulled extra blankets over my sleeping bag. I could hear the sound of cats scavenging in the rubbish bins outside.

Next morning I was so keen to reach Santiago that I decided to walk the whole remaining 43 km straight off. I left in the dark, stopping in Arzúa for a café con leche. It was very cold and frosty, but as usual the sun warmed things up as the day went on. I was full of energy. I walked fast. I couldn't help it. My feet were singing. I passed more churches and wayside crosses on the way...

The Story Of Saint James

Saint James, one of the disciples of Jesus, travelled to Spain but had little success in spreading the Holy Word. He returned to Jerusalem but was beheaded by Herod in AD44. Following his martyrdom, according to the legend, his body was transported by his followers from Jaffa back to Spain, landing at present-day Pádron, 20 km from the place today called Santiago de Compostela. This journey was considered a miracle as it apparently took only a week - and was done in a boat made of stone. Saint James' body was buried nearby and forgotten about for 750 years. Then in the 9th century a hermit called Pelagius dreamed of a bright star, surrounded by other stars, shining over an isolated spot in the hills. 3 bodies were discovered there - purportedly those of Saint James and 2 of his followers. King Alfonso II (791-824), King of the Asturias, built a church and monastery over the site of the tomb and a town grew up around it - known as campus de la stella, or campus stellae, later abbreviated to compostela.

I took this photo of a statue of Saint James, standing aloof from the modern-day traffic, in Molinaseca, much further along the route.

Burgos Or Bust

I woke early next morning feeling a little crazy, slightly mad. Was it a by-product of the previous night's wine? Had Juan Antonio slipped something into those omelettes? I felt completely rested and ready to walk. My head felt light. My knee seemed in pretty good shape. My feet were singing. I had an energy rush. All long distance walkers have days like this now and again. You just want to walk, walk, walk. Fast and far. It would all be effortless, I thought. Oh dear, how deluded can you be...

Fernando, Tere, Irene and I all left the albergue togther but I soon forged ahead. The path flirted with the noisy N-120 once more. Just before Villafranca there's a nasty bit - 2 bends and a bridge - where you have to walk along the edge of the road. Trucks growled past too close for comfort. In Villafranca I stocked up with provisions.

Then it was up, up, up through the oak and pine forests of the Montes de Oca. This is a lovely area, but that morning was very misty and I couldn't see much. It didn't matter. I simply concentrated on what was close at hand. It was like a secret, subterranean world under those ancient, mossed oak trees. I climbed to the highest point at 1,100 metres. And raced on - now mainly through pines - along the sandy trail. Some parts were quite difficult to walk - soggy sand and cloying mud. I saw no one at all except for one lone cyclist who had to dismount and push his bike on this challenging terrain. After what seemed a very long time the path descended and I reached the Augustinian monastery of San Juan de Ortega. I stopped at the bar next door for a rest and a beer.

San Juan, like his mentor Santo Domingo, dedicated himself to serving the Santiago pilgrims and built churches, hospitals, bridges and hostels along the Camino. This remote and beautiful place used to be dangerous for the medieval pilgrim. You were a very long way from anywhere and there were bandits in the woods. The 1st glimpse of this monastery through the trees must have been very welcome. Fortified by a beer or two, my thoughts became even madder and more crazily ambitious. Perhaps I could walk all the way to Burgos and catch up with my pilgrim friends who'd left me behind at Santo Domingo? I'd already walked 25 km. Burgos was a further 28 km away. Could I walk 53 km - 2 stages in 1 day?

I passed through Agés - with its simple medieval stone bridge built by San Juan de Ortega - and Atapuerca, where a curious village dog followed me for a kilometre or so along the stony path up to the Sierra Atapuerca. No doubt the views from the cross at the summit are breathtaking on a clear day. But the mist still hung around so I pressed on, noticing again the little nearby things - like a circular maze constructed by pilgrims out of stones and pebbles.

It was now downhill all the way to Burgos. As I lost height the mist cleared and the views opened up. You could see the city in a blurry haze on the farthest horizon. Though the open-cast mine on the right was not so edifying. All I remember now is that I stumbled painfully through lots and lots of villages, ducked and dived among many busy arterial roads on the outskirts of Burgos, then steeled myself for the dead straight 7 km stretch from Villafria along the hellish N-1 into the city's historic centre. I more or less crawled into one of the 1st hostales I saw. I was totally exhausted and my knee was a nest of vipers. My feet were lead weights of pain and suffering. I thought of the words Thierry had sagely expressed all that time ago on the French section of the Way: Il faut souffrir un peu pour devenir de plus en plus pèlerin!

My photo is of the splendid Gothic cathedral in Burgos.

God Help Us

The Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago catalogues the full range of catastrophes which could overcome the traveller on the roads in the twelfth century... The pilgrim is warned that the eight-mile ascent of the Port de Cize, the principal pass over the Pyrenees, is a steep climb; that in Galicia there are thick forests and few towns; that mosquitoes infest the marshy plain south of Bordeaux where the traveller who strays from the road can sink up to his knees in mud. Some of the rivers are impassable. Several pilgrims had been drowned at Sorde, where travellers and their horses were ferried across the river on hollowed-out tree trunks. Other rivers were undrinkable, like the salt stream at Lorca, where the authors of the Guide found two Basques earning their living by skinning the horses who had died after drinking from it. Pilgrims were in theory exempt from the payment of tolls, but nevertheless the Guide reports that the local lords exacted payment from every traveller in the Béarn. At the foot of the Port de Cize, pilgrims were searched and beaten with sticks if they could not pay the toll...

From Jonathan Sumption's book Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion (1975)

My photo was taken in the abbey church of Saint-Pierre, Moissac.