Camino and Beyond

Tomorrow Sue and I head back home. It is May 16 and we ended the Camino ten days ago. Since then we stayed three days in Santiago, three in Bilbao and three in San Sebastian. We are currently back where we started - Madrid.

The last days of the Camino were bittersweet. My right knee was acting up so any downhill was painful. As Sue often mentioned thank goodness it was the last three days otherwise there is no way I could have done the rest of the Primitivo. We often walked in the midst of a steady stream. Some doing the last 100k over 5 days, some completing the over 800k of the classic Frances route. Regardless we were all perigrinos, pilgrims, and I came to respect and appreciate everyone on the trail. On successive days we began with an encounter with an elderly British woman walking slowly on her own. We came upon her and greeted her with 'Buen Camino' and surmised she was from GB. "How could you tell" she asked, "My denims?". She sussed us out as Canadians right away "A slight accent"she observed. She was sunny and made me think of a favourite aunt. Near the end of the walk we passed a couple from Edmonton. He was essentially walking on crutches as he had only a week earlier done some serious knee damage when he lurched to save a baby carriage a woman had suddenly released when she fell on an escalator into the Paris metro. Every step was a painful exercise but he was determined to finish.

We had a short walk into Santiago de Compastela on May 6 - only 7 k. We were up early and began our walk around 7:30am and were blessedly on our own for most of the walk into town. That felt surreal given the hordes we had been with. Locals were setting up market stalls on the street that lead into the old centre of town ending in the large square in front of the Cathedral - the ancient end of the pilgrimage. It was overcast and a light rain fell as we entered the large square. Tourists milled around, other peregrinos and soon a Disneyesque choo choo train tooted through the square carrying sightseers. We soon made our way to the office where we got our certificates authenticating we had indeed completed the Camino - we were numbers 158 and 163 for the day. Sue admitted to shedding a tear when the official stamped her passport for the final time.

We visited the cathedral and attended a packed noon mass for pilgrims. The cathedral was magnificent, bright and beautifully lit. I had a sense of being a part of something especially at the end when they lit the huge censer and just like in the film The Way it was borne aloft by eight monk like men (I could see jeans and Adidas under their Franciscan robes so not sure if this might have been random dudes) and as they pulled down hard the censer swung in a huge arc over the congregants. Of course all decorum vanished as we pulled out our cameras and videoed this iconic Santiago moment. Even the priests as they filed out after mass seemed in on the excitement, smiling and waving like rock stars.

We left the Cathedral and soon joined a group of our Primitivo pals who had congregated at a terrace nearby. What joy to see them all again! We were welcomed with a hearty cheer and were soon swapping tales of our last kilometers, how much we missed the peace and companionship of our time in the Asturias 'mountains' and our various stressed out joints and feet. A day later Sue and I met with a few friends over dinner and I had the pleasure of sitting beside Cornelius, a Dutchman well into his seventies who announced this was his last Camino - his seventh. He spoke with such feeling about the joy of walking and of being a peregrino. Germans, Dutch, Danes, Spanish, Irish - all with walking as a common thing in their lives. So foreign to our North American mentality.

We spent three days in each of Santiago, Bilbao and San Sebastian. Each city we loved. Santiago, with a population of only 96,000 had an extraordinary density of life in its streets and squares. To get to our hotel in Santiago we had to walk through a street party on a Saturday night that lasted for almost a kilometer. Imagine Kamloops of Bellville where Tim Hortons will be the cultural touchstone. Bilbao has wonderful tapas bars around a beautiful square - the Plaza Nuevo and the bustle of a confident city with Gehry's Guggenheim as the touchstone. San Sebastian lived up to its culinary billing. No sit down meals but innovative tapas or pintxos as they are known in the Basque region and a crazy nightlife. It blew us away how so many Europeans fly down for the weekend just to eat and drink.

We are home now after a marathon combo of subways, flights, taxis etc. I want to add one postscript that is observations from a moment in time is San Sebastian when Sue found ourselves at a small table in an area away from the tourist mainstream. It was a late afternoon, sunny after days of consistent and heavy rains. The table faced an outdoor 'square' bounded on one side by the steps of a church and defined on the other by an arc of a cobbled 'street'. The street maybe ten feet across and the radius of the half circle about 100 feet - not a large space. As we sat in the sun, drinking our first sangria of the trip, we watched as life unfolded before us. Knots of young boys gathered, smoked, antennae out for any girls passing, people of all ages strolled, stopped to connect and moved on, young boys kicked the ever present soccer ball against a wall. We were there probably 45 minutes and must have seen hundreds flow by. At one point a steady flow of all ages, well dressed found their way to the church. The bell rang for 6:00 mass. We moved on as the sun lowered and the next day passed through the space where all was back to 'normal'.