El Camino de Santiago

Even though it was over six years ago since I walked the Camino de Santiago, it's still something that people in the UK seem to know very little about. Just a guess, but it's probably something to do with the fact that it's one of the most important Christian pilgrimage routes in the world - Santiago is St James, whose supposed remains are displayed in an ornate little chest in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostella - and the British haven't much cared for pilgrims or pilgramages since good Old Chaucer.

Even though, the year I walked it, I met a scriptwriter and a couple of guys with a camera, I never expected that a film about the Camino would end up coming out of Hollywood. I haven't seen it, but apparently Emilio Estevez wrote it, after his pops and son walked the Camino, whereupon his son promptly fell in love with the daughter of an innkeeper along the route and packed up and moved to Spain. I watched the trailer and could hardly stop laughing because even though every second feels like cinematic cliché, it also closely resembled many of my own experiences: most of the people I met were like stock characters in Hans Christian Andersen fairytales rewritten for twenty-first century life.

Though historically the Camino had a number of traditional starting points, most modern-day pilgrims inexplicably go through all of the trouble in getting to tiny French town, St Jean Pied de Port, which is now generally considered the "starting point", in order to rock up in Santiago de Compostela 800km, or about a month, later.  

When I walked the Camino, I had a bit more time to kill and given that I knew a little bit about the history of the Camino thanks to my mother, I opted to start in one of the medieval starting points, Vézelay, about 180km from Paris. Given that Hollywood had yet to sink its claws into the Camino, there weren't very many websites or guidebooks telling you what to do or where to go, and given that I didn't think medieval accounts would be of much use to me, I simply got a train to Vézelay and started walking. 

Luckily there was a small association dedicated to the Camino and they produced a guidebook type thing with directions, maps and a list of places for pilgrims to stay. Little did I know that it was an altogether entirely rare thing for people to way part of the Camino in France and in the entire month it took me to walk from Vézelay to St Jean Pied de Port, I met less than ten other pilgrims. I had some terrible times, naturally, but for the most part the whole thing was incredible: I walked through beautiful countryside; stayed in an enormous château near Bazas; a monastery near somewhere I can't remember off the top of my head; slept on the floor of a town hall in a tiny hamlet, where the woman who looked after the town church brought me a pail of fresh milk in the morning; talked to myself far too often; got really good at speaking French (I'll never forget the difference between connaître and savoir thanks to two sisters from the convent in Corbigny); and even hitch-hiked with some teens after getting tendinitis in my knee. I also got lost. A lot.

Once I got to St Jean, it was a whole different ballgame. I mean there were people everywhere. I went from spending a month pretty much on my own rambling through the French countryside, to being surrounded my other pilgrims. It wasn't bad, just different. In fact, I'm glad I had that month on my own, because I enjoyed the company of all the other people instead of feeling resentful that there were just so many of them. The reason why I laughed at the trailer for Estevez's flick is because I met people just like that, and given the circumstances, friendships and romances develop like wildfires - very quickly and very intense. I had a three year relationship with someone I met on the Camino and I'm still friends with a handful more. 

A lot of people say it's a life changing experience, but I suppose that depends on what kind of life you were living before you went on the Camino. For me, it was a wonderful experience and one I'll never forget -  I'd like to do it again, but I worry it won't be as instant, as vivid, as surprising if I do it a second time. Having said that, I probably will anyway. I might just wait until The Way fever has died down a bit.

If you want to see more pictures, there are more from France here and from Span here.