Camino de Santiago (Part Five)

Eddy and I are walking along. The day has been hard and steep and my shoulders are sore. Two people come up behind us. One look at their calves (and the fact they are wearing shorts in this weather) tells us that this isn't their first long distance walk. Suddenly they are tutting at us in Italian (tutti-tutti) and the next thing I know he has his arms around me- adjusting all the straps on my backpack. When it has moved several inches up from my hips and tightened as far as it will go around my waist he steps back. “Better,” his wife says and they pace off again.

Eddy looks at my new 'perky' tortoise figure sceptically. The weight is certainly off my shoulders. It's not quite as easy to breathe, but then, who needs air? We walk on, me wondering whether I've been carrying my backpack incorrectly for 650km and Eddy saying with conviction that at least his was okay. We walk a bit further and I get caught up talking to two English pilgrims in their seventies. Their thoughts have turned to the next pub. When I look around, Eddy isn't there. I excuse myself and wait by the side of the road wondering where he's got to. After a while, he trudges up looking disgruntled. His backpack is sitting considerably higher as well- a rear attack from the couple we thought were in front of us. For my part, the adjustments, once twiggled to allow some breathing space, were good. Eddy waited until the couple were out of sight and changed his back to how it was.

There is nothing like a mountain to wake you up in the morning. Most pilgrim albergues require you to leave by 8am and the side effect of this is that you often reach the summit before the sun does. There is something truly great about being in high places, especially (relatively) early in the morning. This was the case on the morning we left Villafranca. We crossed the ancient bridge leading out of the town and took a right up the steepest street I have ever seen. It soon turned into a gravel path that went up and up and up, and despite the panting and the tearing feeling in our lungs we were having the time of our lives. The views were stunning, the air pine-fresh and best of all, there was no one around. When we reached the top, of the top, of the top, we stopped for a rest, savouring the silence and our frozen ears. And then we heard voices, and a car, and more voices. We rounded a corner to find an amazing chestnut grove. Every fifty square metres or so, was a different family, out gathering chestnuts. Grandpas down to littlies, this was a task that required as many people as possible. We wound our way through them, watching old men bat chestnuts into sacks with their walking sticks. It was a beautiful morning but it goes to show that you are never as alone as you think you are, especially on the Camino de Santiago.

A few days later, we had another morning of climbing that took us into the province of Galicia, the last province we would cross through. For the record, the My Fair Lady allegation that “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain” is rubbish. We had crossed the plain for 200km and only got rained on once. The rain in Spain falls almost exclusively on the pilgrims walking across Galicia. Half an hour after we passed the signpost, it started, and it didn't stop. It wasn't long before we both had colds and we sneezed and coughed our way through some of the most beautiful scenery of the walk. We tried, where possible, to shorten the distance we were going each day, particularly when there were two routes to choose from. It came as a surprise then, one day when we took a right turn on to the 'shorter' route, to find out a few kilometres along that it wasn't actually that. This route included a six kilometre detour to see the beautiful monastery at Samos. The countryside was beautiful and the path took its time, winding through several farming hamlets, all of which, we will remember fondly every time we smell wet manure. A sudden hailstorm saw us scramble for some shelter and we ate lunch under a rock overhang. We didn't see another pilgrim all day. They obviously had read their maps a little more carefully than us.

We didn't hear much outside news while we were on the trip. The credit crunch and the lead-up to the US elections seemed to belong to a different world where people in fast, four-wheeled things covered a whole day's walk in a few minutes. A world where people had more than one pair of clothes. A world where people were dry for hours on end. The major components of our world were finding food, finding shelter, walking to the next place, then repeating the process. So simple. We had a lot of time to think, but we didn't come to any great conclusions about life, the universe and everything. We didn't see our futures in the puddles or have any divine revelations. We just saw a part of the world that we hadn't seen before, and thought it beautiful.

The day we crossed the 100 kilometres left to go mark, our pace quickened. The finish line was only double digits away, and although we were still enjoying each day's walk, we were looking forward to the night when we no longer had to stay in Galician albergues. To be fair, they were cheap- three euros a night. The bad thing was, they took communal living to a whole other level. I was put off when we went to the first one and I saw the showers didn't have doors on them. I was shocked when we arrived at one that didn't have doors, and was unisex. My response was not to shower. We were wet all day anyway.

Our second last day was the biggest of the whole trip. The route was lined with eucalyptus trees, imported from Australia for the pulp mills. Their beautiful smell kept us going for 34 kilometres. When we departed the next morning, there was just twenty kilometres left to go. We took our time, and I found a lovely pine grove to leave the two rocks I had carried all the way from Bathurst in. It was a Sunday and the roads were quiet. The outskirts of Santiago looked like the outskirts of all cities. It wasn't until we crossed into the old town that we started to feel excited and nervous. The streets were bustling with tourists, and we wound our way through towards the Cathedral.

Both Eddy and I had really missed listening to (and playing) music along the Camino. When we did hear some, it felt precious. There was a trumpeter, busking in the central square of Pamplona and a guitarist serenading the shoppers in Burgos. An amazing piano accordionist had people dancing in the streets of Leon. But, it was the piper, stationed under the archway leading down to Santiago Cathedral that simultaneously brought tears to my eyes and filled me with an incredible joie de vivre. Eddy and I marched into the cathedral square and there it was, and there we were. We had made it and it felt incredible.