Walking the camino de santiago

‘How was it?’ I’ve been asked this question a lot since returning from Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain, but there’s no simple answer. I walked the Camino Frances – 800 kilometres (that’s 500 miles) beginning in the south of France, following in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims to reach Santiago and the shrine of St James – it took me 30 days (plus another 4 days and 90k to reach the coast from Santiago). At times it was terrible. Blisters, burning sun, tired legs, noisy roads, crowded dormitories in the pilgrim albergues (90 beds in one room!). But these things were always eventually outweighed by something beautiful or incredible – the hospitality of singing nuns, picking grapes from the vine and figs from the tree, sunrise, and the smell of eucalyptus trees. Not forgetting huge sandwiches and bottles of wine for €1! And of course the people. People of all ages and backgrounds walk the camino and everyone walks it their own way. I met people who had hotels booked and their luggage delivered and others who could take as long as they wanted, stopping whenever they
pleased. I met religious people and those of no faith at all and I met people who had walked from Italy and even Germany! We were all there for our own reasons and doing it our own way. Reaching Santiago Cathedral and receiving a blessing under the botafumeiro (enormous, swinging incense burner) and eventually walking on the beach at Finesterre, the ‘end of the earth’, were special but the lessons I learnt on the journey will stay with me forever – lessons of simplicity, patience and kindness.

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