The English Way April 29, 2014
"Buen viaje, buen camino", smiled the cafe waiter that first morning as we set out from our hotel. It had been light for only a half hour, though it was 8am. We had drunk our cafe con leches and eaten our croissants, organized our backpacks, filled our water bottles. Our "camino passports" had been stamped by the tourist office the day before. We were as ready as we could be, given that we hadn't really planned this experience before leaving Maine in January. But here we were in El Ferrol, in the very northwestern corner of Spain. It is the starting point for the Camino Ingles, the English Way, one of the ancient pilgrimage routes leading to Santiago de Campostela, 80 miles away. We intended to walk to the cathedral in Santiago, along a path marked by bright yellow scallop shells pointing the way. We expected that it would take us 6-7 days.
Why, you might ask, would we do this? "It's hard to explain", the author Jack Hitt had written in Off the Road, his memoir about walking the camino frances, the more popular - and much longer - way, starting in France. "It's a calling," our Alozaina friend, Alice, had said. For Bruce and me, when we really thought about it, there were several factors propelling us toward this experience. Yes, there was that vague, undefinable pull, but we also knew that we wanted to retrace the historical steps of the ancient pilgrims on their spiritual quest, to simplify our life for a brief interlude by traveling in the old way - on foot - with the barest necessities carried on our backs, to be outside in the beautiful Galician spring countryside, and to test ourselves physically and mentally. Neither of us had ever hiked more than a day at a time, and even that was a rare event. But this promised to be do-able, we thought, with lodging and cafes in towns along the way - and plenty of time to stop and rest if we needed to. This was April 3 and we weren't due to depart for home from Madrid until April 15.
It had rained heavily the night before starting off, and the day was damp and gray and cool, a typical day in Galicia. Galicia, as we discovered, is very different from the other regions that we had visited in Spain. Unlike Andalucia, it's often rainy. Its terrain is lush and green, reminding us of Ireland and England - and Maine! It's heritage is Celtic, and we heard bagpipes playing in Santiago and saw lots of silver Celtic knotwork jewelry in the stores. The Galician language, on the other hand, is related to Portuguese, which makes sense, given that it's next door to Portugal. The word for street is not calle, as in Spanish, but rua. Both Galician and Spanish are the official languages of this semi-autonomous region.
So, on April 3, full of anticipation, we headed out to the waterfront path in El Ferrol, in the direction that our rough map described, looking for our first scallop shell to confirm that we were on the right path. El Ferrol is a Navy base, and we could see a small aircraft carrier in the harbor. In fact, in a funny life coincidence, Bruce had stopped in El Ferrol when he was in the US Navy, 45 years ago. His ship had pulled in there to refuel on its way from the Mediterranean to England. Being the only Spanish speaker on board, he had been called upon to do some of the talking with the Spanish officials.
Finding our first shell marker in Ferrol was cause for celebration! From there, the way led along the water, around a traffic round-about, past a shopping center on a nice walking trail, with views of the water on one side, past a couple of tethered horses munching green grass. So far, so good. My balky hip was hurting but I was trying a variety of strategies to minimize the discomfort, including standing up straighter, as my mom had always urged me to do! I had begun the day with Advil that Matt had left for me.
We spent that first morning making our way around the huge inlet of the river. The path took us to two towns and two cities, always in sight of the water. Lunch was a sandwich that we had bought at a grocery store, eaten beside one of the many hillside springs that we were to encounter along the way. As we ate, an older man drove up and filled big plastic bottles with fresh water.
The afternoon took us through woods and small, medieval hamlets. The day had brightened up with blue skies and fluffy white clouds, though darker ones lurked always in the distance. We saw no other pilgrims that day, and it was a peaceful excursion. Our destination was the old city of Pontedueme, situated on an estuary near the ocean. Unlike the original pilgrims, modern day pilgrims are outfitted with smart phones, a handy new device for Bruce and me. He called ahead and found a room for us. It was a very long hike (around 15 miles), and we dragged into our little pensione in the late afternoon, thirsty for a beer and ready for a lie-down. Dinner happened to be the only bad meal that I've had in Spain, a Caesar salad filled with multi-colored pasta, in a place called The Beers Club. I guess, with a name like that, it serves us right! That night, we drifted off to sleep to the sounds of guitar-playing in the plaza below us and bells from the church on the hill. After a hot shower and a good night's sleep, we were relieved to find that we were none the worse for wear as a result of our inaugural pilgrim hike.
Pouring rain greeted us when we awoke, and we contemplated staying in our dry pensione for another day. But during breakfast the rain tapered off to drizzle, and we decided to brave the elements. First, we bought all-purpose umbrellas, in case of more rain, as well as for warding off aggressive, unleashed dogs and for walking sticks. Pushing on turned out to be a good decision, as the day again brightened up. By the end of our seven miles, we had stripped down to shirtsleeves and had arrived at the seaside town of Mino. Like Maine coastal towns, it was pretty quiet on an April afternoon. We were the only guests in the hostal where we stayed, and it had the musty smell of a place that hadn't seen many occupants since the previous season. We took a walk along the lovely golden sand beach, collecting tiny scallop shells and enjoying a stroll without our backpacks. Supper was a picnic in our room.
The rest of our time on the camino was more social than our first two days. We had a couple of very pleasant encounters with locals this next day, one a friendly owner of a pretty riverbank cafe in the village of Ponte de Porco. She sent us off with the goodwill gesture of 4 packets of olive oil! I couldn't help but wonder if the old, lichen-encrusted stone cross atop a statue of a pig was related to the name of the hamlet. Later Bruce got ahead of me on the trail and had a chat with an 80 year old man, dressed in his woolen sports coat, out for a walk with his perky, smiling 86 year old wife. The man had worked in Germany for 20 years and complimented Bruce on his skill in speaking Spanish. In the afternoon, we encountered a young mother who hailed us as we explored an old church yard. She could tell that we were English-speaking (I'm still not sure how that works) and wanted to converse with us since she had "taken her engineering degree" in England. She ended up offering to call a hotel for us in the next city. The Galicians along the camino ingles couldn't have been nicer!
In Betanzos, the medieval capital of one of the Galician provinces, we met an Australian couple, Graham and Cheryl, who were walking the camino, too. They became our friendly mentors and companions for the rest of our four days on the trail. They had walked the camino frances, 500 miles in 42 days, last May, and had great tales of their experience. Bruce took notes on their gear, and we both decided that the camino frances was not for us: too long and too crowded with pilgrims. Walking paces are individual things, and it's easy to get ahead or behind when walking with others. But our pace was very similar to Graham and Cheryl's, and we really enjoyed their company. Along the way, we also met a German couple, Axel and Janette, as well as another American couple from Minnesota. We would meet up with them here and there, but they both had arranged to have their "stuff" transported for them each day. We hadn't even realized that this was a possibility on the camino, and some would argue that it violates the true idea of a pilgrimage. But, as Graham would say, we each do the camino in our own way.
I must mention one of the lodgings that we stayed in, Mezon Novo, located in Bruma or thereabouts. It was run by 75 year old Antonio, his 78 year old wife, and their son, Antonio, Jr., a look-alike for Agent 007 actor, Daniel Craig. They were the BEST hosts on the whole camino, transporting us from the trail to their hotel, serving us a delicious meal in their cafe, plying us with wine while they watched a futbol match on tv, turning up the heat in our rooms so that we could warm up from the chilly day and also dry our handwashing, returning us to the trail in the morning. Mother and father had worked in England in their youth and could converse easily with us. Despite their long days, 5am-10pm, they clearly love their jobs, working hard, and being independent business owners.
Our last morning began with rain again, with a dose of thunder and lightening. However, by the time that we actually got on the trail, there was just a bit of drizzle, which quickly turned into sun and warmth for the last leg of our pilgrimage. Still in the countryside, we ran into a herd of cows being led down the road by a man and wife, but signs of urbanization began to appear, including jet planes overhead from the nearby Santiago airport. Once we hit Santiago,we stopped for congratulatory beers with Graham and Cheryl, then checked in at the small pilgrims reception center. Our passports, filled with stamps from establishments along the way verified our pilgrimage, and we were awarded our certificates, written in Latin, confirming that we had completed at least 100 km of the camino. It was a little anti-climatic. While it was nice to have the certificate, the piece of paper could hardly convey the incredible experience of walking the land, feeling the rain and the sun, seeing the beauty of sea and woods and spring wildflowers and farms and old, old towns, meeting interesting people with stories to tell, and discovering that we could actually still do something like this. The human body is amazing, still ticking after all these years. May they both be thus for a few more years!
The day after we arrived in Santiago, we attended mass at the beautiful large stone cathedral that dominates this lovely medieval city. A special mass is held each day at noon for the pilgrims. Santiago, St. James in English, was one of Christ's apostles who had spent time in Spain, spreading Christianity. He was the first martyr, having been beheaded upon his return to Jerusalem in 44 AD. His followers brought his body back to Spain, so the story goes, and buried him in the area where the cathedral now stands. For 800 years, his exact burial spot was unknown until a hermit discovered his bones. When word got out, pilgrims began arriving from all over Europe, eventually making Santiago de Compostela the third most important Christian pilgrimage destination, after Rome and Jerusalem. Today, in high season, we are told that 1500 pilgrims a day arrive in Santiago, most of them having walked the camino frances. During mass, the statistics for that day are announced, noting the number of pilgrims who have arrived from each of the six routes and their nationality. On our day, the total was more like 200 pilgrims. It's not high season yet.
Walking the camino ingles had been a wonderful way to complete our winter in Spain, giving us time to reflect and also to get ready for our return to Maine. And now we were definitely ready to get back home to our friends and family. In a mutual occurence of karma, both my laptop and my camera had died. After taking 5000+ photos over the past 18 months, the poor camera went through an elecrical spasm of flashing lights and then went blank, sadly leaving me with no photos of the camino to share with you. Time to go back home. Besides, word had reached us that the snow was gone in Maine!
