27 Days a Pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Preface

I sit here in Melbourne, Australia, and I contemplate what I've done: I walked across Spain.

'How did it go?' I've been asked the question daily since I returned home, except by someone at work, who said, 'Can't wait to hear how it went. Now, on a work matter...' Not once has she revisited to the topic of my Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage.

But, then, as with so much in life, walking the Camino can be such a solitary experience.

Okay, so I didn't walk the full 800km Camino Francés, from St Jean Pied-de-Port in south-west France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. Due to exhaustion, and, later, fear of it, I caught two very brief lifts in cars, three buses, and three short taxi rides, one of which was for a lame one hundred metres. (I'm way too frugal to pay for long taxi rides!)

Why do I have this feeling of guilt? Some pilgrims, I discovered, travelled all the way from their home country just to walk a pre-planned 100kms, saying they do that much each year. Other pilgrims had their backpack couriered between towns. Yet, I feel guilty because I'd promised myself I would walk the entire Camino Francés come hell or high water.

And I'd recklessly made light of the 800 kilometres to friends back home before I went.

But, of course, once you cheat the first time, it's like dipping into the petty cash tin at work, even when you own the business! You fall victim to repeating the recalcitrant behaviour.

What I should have done—it's easy to say in hindsight—is to have stuck to my guns. For months prior to my leaving for Spain, I'd promised myself than on Day One (considered the hardest leg of the entire Camino) I would take what guidebook author John Brierley offers as an alternative, easier way to get over the Pyrenees and into Spain: by walking the highway!

Roncesvalles is the first town you come to in Spain, on the lee side of the Pyrenees. It is generally considered the first overnight stop. The highway would get me there easily.

Mr Brierley's alternate route along the road is a legitimate option, he assures his readers.

Indeed, as I would later discover, many thoroughly conscientious pilgrims begin their Camino experience at Roncesvalles, to avoid altogether the climb over the Pyrenees. No one on the Camino frowns at pilgrims starting there. But, as I discovered, anything on the Camino is considered legitimate; the first lesson we trekkers learned out on the track was that each person's Camino is their own—no one else's. You do what you can; you walk as far and as often as you feel is your limit. You make no excuses. No explanations are required.

And being precious isn't allowed on The Way, as the Camino is called in the movie's title.

In its own way, these truisms become the first cleansing therapy one experiences. There is no place on the Camino de Santiago for self-admonition, or apologies. You are who you are; you dress as you choose, you shave if you wish, you eat and drink and walk with whomever.

And you decide whatever walking route your heart and physical wherewithal embraces.

You definitely don't indulge in any form of self-recrimination. Hmm! Why me then?

The only rule is that you be you. And a contented you at that. So, listen-up, Michael, and heed your own advice!

Or, as my erstwhile lawyer walking buddy, Robbert-with-two-'b's (because my mother stutters) from south of Amsterdam—who I met late on Day Six as I walked into Estella and with whom I struck-up a lasting friendship—said ad nausea, Fuck it!

Now, after it's all over, and I sit at my desk, I glance again at Mr Brierley's guidebook. I so wish that I had taken his advice, which for Day One was this: 'Don't let initial euphoria force a pace in these early days for which you have not adequately prepared. Find your own walking speed. You can always catch up with friends later and in the meantime experience the rich camaraderie that develops along the way.'

And, while I did begin to question Mr Brierley, especially for what I considered to be his less-than-honest gradient maps (they seemed to belie the true steepness of a day's climb), I nevertheless came to greatly respect his vital contribution to my Camino experience. I am grateful to John for his permission to reprint his pages for Day One. If only I'd taken his grey-dotted route and accompanying advice—and walked the highway, which I was forced to travel later by taxi anyway!—I would not have set my precedent of 'cheating', which led to a nasty, occasional and lazy habit.

Too late! Although something deep inside urges me to jump on the next flight to Paris and do the whole freaking trek again. Properly. Without cheating!

(Maybe this is not improbable: a friend just called to ask me to lead a tour group of eight budding pilgrims over the Camino Francés, in 2016. Now, what a challenge that would be! A thought strikes me: What if I was to charge each one of them a fee to cover my costs?)

Please indulge me, and allow me to say more about John Brierley's map, reprinted above with his kind permission. John's yellow-dotted route depicts his recommended Route de Napoleon. On this, his first map of thirty-three manageable, daily walks to Santiago, the yellow dots take you out of St Jean (moving up the second page), up past the first albergue (dormitory), shown as 'Napoleon, privately-run', located in the middle of nowhere and thoroughly too-short-a-distance from St Jean to justify being the first night's stop.

The yellow dots then lead to another privately-run dormitory at the tiny hamlet of Hunto.

By this stage, for me, the steepness of the climb was becoming prohibitive—causing serious breathlessness. The formidable minor road and the grassy pathways I was climbing, despite being constantly marked with yellow arrows and blue scallop shells to help guide me, caused me to be completely exhausted, unable to take another step without a long rest. My 'Aarn' backpack was not sitting well; it was causing two muscles down the middle of my back in particular to hurt like hell—they were sending a dull, throbbing pain up to my brain. Fellow pilgrims were passing me literally by the dozen, all of them talking their heads off in Spanish, French or Italian, the droning-on of which was beginning to drive me nuts.

From where did they get the energy to walk and talk so loudly at the same time?

I began to think, if this is what my five-week, foot-powered sojourn to Santiago de Compostela is going to be all about, I'm ready to rethink this whole stupid idea.

I began to hallucinate about the luxury motorhome which Arjay, my beloved fiancé in Manila, Philippines, and I will use to 'do the Camino' another time. Ah, those comfy padded armchairs; being propelled along by a motor; no pain in the middle back; no breathlessness.

More about what happened next, soon, safe to say here that I didn't chuck in the towel completely, although my brain began to give me a million reasons why I should have done so.

Due to serious past health issues, I could very easily justify abandoning on medical grounds this whole crazy idea of trekking the Camino-de-bloody-Santiago-de-bloody-Compostela. I'm not a physical person, unlike my late mother, I kept telling myself.

Mum had played tennis at Wimbledon, was Switzerland's table tennis champion, and was the fastest woman on ice skates in our home state of Victoria. Me? I'm the opposite; totally inept at almost every sport except swimming. Indeed, when my kids were growing up, and someone threw a tennis ball to me, my children would call out: 'He's a swimmer'. Brats!

But I certainly couldn't countenance throwing in the towel out on the Camino when I thought of my bragging before I'd left home.

Yet, I was suffering out there. It took me back to 1967, when aged seventeen, I'd begun as a jackaroo (cowboy on an outback sheep and cattle station). The life was so tough that I'd tried to resign on my third morning, but the boss wouldn't hear of it. (Thank God, I now say). He said, Michael, if you chuck this in, you'll never stick at anything difficult in life. Now, get back out there (in the stifling sheep yards). So, I went back out—and stayed the year.

Back to the now. I sit here and ponder the extraordinary experience I had on the Camino: the highs and lows, laughs and tears, joys and pains (of climbing the hills), agreements and arguments, and of course my cheating! I worry far too much about my cheating behaviour.

When I'm asked how far I walked, I reply, truthfully, Five-hundred-and-forty-three kilometres. I didn't make the full eight-hundred.

I wait for the person's reaction, expecting to be told that I'm an out-and-out wuss.

It's a lot more than I could do, most people have replied, feigning honesty and kindness. And yet, as they walk away, I know that they've just whispered to themselves, Loser!

I am a wuss, a useless wuss. I could have done the Pyrenees. I could also have done 'Kate Ceberano' (an Aussie singer, but also the nickname I gave to a gruelling, later-day's climb to a town called O' Cebreiro), but which instead I avoided by taking a bus. Trouble was the bus didn't go to the next set town of Triacastela; it went instead to the town after that: Sarria.

I'd just cheated my way out of two days of my 'required' pilgrimage experience.

By then, however, my naughty brain was beginning to hatch a new plan. If I wasn't using any of the five rest days I'd allotted for my time in Spain, so my head began to reason, I could re-jig my schedule—and my flights home—and spend time with Arjay in Manila.

The two days saved by taking the bus from Villafranca to Sarria meant I'd now earned seven days in the Philippines. Woo-hoo! Mr Wonderful, here I come.

It's amazing how the human brain justifies actions. I became able to convince myself that five hundred and forty three kilometres was a half-decent trek, after all.

Yet, my cheating behaviour—my guilt—gnaws at me, like it did the day I stole my first bunch of grapes which had dangled enticingly from a farmer's vines not three metres from where I'd been walking alone along a deserted stretch of the thousand-year-old Camino track.

There are few fences on the Camino, which meant there had been no barriers between me and my proposed, criminal, Garden-of-Eden heist. After passing a million dangling bunches of ready-to-harvest grapes, I'd fully justified my proposed felony. So what? I'd seen many times the remains which fellow pilgrims had left behind: bare, freshly-picked green stems and accompanying leaves lying on the ground next to a bench seat or rock ideal for perching on, while those thieving, fellow peregrinos had munched on their illicit harvest.

Having the freedom to allow myself the privilege to shed my backpack for several minutes and sit on a bench seat or rock and feast on juicy grapes, which otherwise were destined to become cheap nectar for some Spanish alcoholic, I found... well, thoroughly justifiable.

Buen Camino, we'd say to one another with a smile, and in a non-accusatory tone, as we tramped past fellow pilgrims nonchalantly gnawing away at their free fruit from the vine.

Or, maybe I'd get a Mind if I join you? as a fellow pilgrim, someone I'd not before met, shed his or her backpack and took up a dining position next to mine. With a Where are you from, amigo? our ensuing friendship might last for five minutes, or forever!

Occasionally, my eyes would focus on a small mound of grape skins, which some amazingly-fussy pilgrim had left behind. It's one thing not to eat the pips, I'd thought, but what's this about not eating grape skins. That's a bit precious, isn't it? I eat lemon rind.

Snatching a hefty bunch of grapes off a vine became a skill in itself. I'd look both ways and, not seeing human life within cooee I'd tippy-toe the four paces off the gravel pilgrims' path, stepping over rich black soil which was bedding for the vines. Looking again from left to right, I'd then bend down and grasp a big stem of lush red marbles: cool, fulsome grapes soon to quench my taste buds. I'd already resolved that the farmer wouldn't mind, because earlier, there'd been the grape-growing farmer who each day filled a public fountain with red wine specifically for pilgrims to hold their mouths under the tap. People said it was the farmer's way of supporting pilgrims on their spiritual journey, but also because he truly believed his benevolence would purge his mortal sins without his need to walk the Camino.

Such generosity from one farmer, I convinced myself, justified stealing another's produce.

Get over it, Michael, and just eat, I'd told myself. They guy's got tonnes more grapes!

And so it was that cheating and stealing became integral to my rich, spiritual pilgrimage.

Nevertheless, stress I did, except when I regarded myself more kindly. For instance, taking the first of my taxi rides—to Roncesvalles—I justified on the grounds of it being a legitimate and serious health concession as thoughts of my 2004 quadruple heart bypass had begun to scare the bejesus out of me. I knew, in fact, that I'd actually become quite unwell due to the harsh incline. The kind lady who gave me a lift (less than a 500 metres, as it turned out) to the tiny hamlet of Pic D'Orisson, had looked at me from behind the wheel of her SUV, and had said, You look white!

Thank you, I'd replied, already warming to the comfort of her luxury vehicle. I feel it.

Later, the taxi driver who collected me from the cafe there and took me back to St Jean and then on to Roncesvalles, wove around bends in the road so rapidly, that even though it was five hours since breakfast, I felt the orange juice, croissant and jam, and the two cups of strong coffee coming up—rapidly.

Senor, would you mind slowing down just a tad, por favor? I'm about to be car sick for the first time in my adult life. I thought I'd done quite well using my special version of Spanish.

I suspect he was French.

Nevertheless, something inside still haunts me, telling me I should go back and walk the remaining 257 kilometres, and do the whole bloody Camino again—this time properly.

I anguish a lot about Kate Ceberano. After flicking through Mr Brierley's map pages and analysing the fearfully-steep gradient map on page twenty-six, I had vehemently noted not to tackle that day's climb; I'd even daubed 'BUS' in bold handwriting across the page. This, even though the bunch of pilgrims with whom I would joyfully spend the previous night at Villafranca del Bierzo—me drinking my Kas Lemin soda water; them, their questionable red 'wine'—had heaped scorn on me for chickening out of the scheduled climb, even before you've tried it, they'd chided me.

Get off my back, will yous? [sic—Aussie 'strine']

But, memories of Orrison continued to haunt me. Mr Brierley's gradient map of the steep climb up Kate had looked much the same on paper as the one printed earlier in his guidebook for the trek over the Pyrenees on Day One.

I don't need to do it, I'd retorted. I can tell from Mr Brierley's gradient map that it's way beyond my comfort zone, far too steep a climb for the likes of me.

I'd learned my lesson back on Day One. Anything that Mr Brierley showed on his gradient map as the simplest of upward inclines, I now knew in truth was tantamount to torture requiring use of hard hats, safety ropes and spiked shoes—plus the signing of a disclaimer.

Cheerio. I'll see yous all at Sarria, I'd said in my oft-adopted, show-off Aussie way.

But, of course, I didn't see them in Sarria because I beat them there, using the bus, and I'd put miles and miles of Camino track between them and me.

As those poor devils huffed and puffed their way up Kate Ceberano (why in God's name? I kept asking myself), I relaxed in my bus's comfy seat with its pristine, soft, cloth seat cover, watching Hitchcock with Sir Anthony Hopkins complete with Spanish dialogue on the TV screen above the driver, and with pretty views of horrific mountain ranges outside.

Was that Janis from Vancouver I saw being stretchered-out from below that rock face?

A new thought had struck me: there's no chance that this bus goes to Santiago, is there?

A fortnight in Manila with Arjay, lolling about in a hotel's rooftop swimming pool with a mango smoothie complete with floral, cardboard umbrella and red cherry was starting to appeal enormously. What possessed me to undertake this pilgrimage?

* * *

When I first planned my Camino walk—well over twelve months ago—my main motivation for undertaking the adventure had been to write the story of walking it for a chapter of a book on twenty things to achieve before I die—for a book titled Michael's Bucket List.

Some things on my bucket list had already been ticked-off, chapters already written, like No. 5: Volunteer Overseas, and No.6: Publish a Memoir.

Chapter seven had been given a title. It was called Walk the Camino.

Then I'd watched the movie, The Way, starring Martin Sheen, and written for him by his talented writer-director son Emilio Estevez. Watching the film and seeing Sheen (Tom Avery in the role) spread his son Daniel's ashes along The Way, I'd realised that I'd be walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela as much in memory my late son, Jamie, who died from complications to his chronic diabetes, in 2011. Jamie had been twenty-eight.

As I'd begun to walk my Camino—especially when trekking alone—I had realised that the bucket-list-book purpose, while still a major reason for walking to Santiago, was being replaced by a far greater mission: to honour the memory of my darling boy. The overwhelming sense of loss along The Way—the raw emotion—which had begun to bring on daily tears for Jamie like I'd never envisaged, had become palpable. The bucket list book idea rapidly had become secondary. I began to think of Jamie; how much I missed him, how much I ached to have him back as I tramped kilometre upon kilometre across the roof of Spain.

Jamie's death gnawed at me constantly. Indeed, tears for my dear, departed son became so regular that I truly began to believe fellow pilgrims were starting to avoid me.

Then there was the night I was asked to sing a solo at the night-time Mass in the church at Carrion de Los Condes. This was after I'd had the on-again, off-again sighting of the man-in-black, resembling Saint James, a real person who had followed me early one morning in half light on a disused and fully-fenced-off section of abandoned highway.

Had Saint James been there to protect me after I got lost?

By that point, I knew my primary purpose for walking to Santiago was to honour Jamie's memory. Too many spiritual 'coincidences' had begun to occur to be... coincidental.

If the quantity and regularity of tears for Jamie, which cascaded down my cheeks constantly during my four weeks in Spain, is any measure, then Michael's Camino was indeed foremost a memorial to a son missed very dearly... very deeply... very sincerely.

Jamie was with me out there constantly: in the forests, on the Meseta Plain, in the towns and cities I trudged through, beside highways and streams, in dormitories—everywhere.

Jamie had a family-only nickname. Early on, his mother called him Pudding. In time, this got shortened to Pudda. During his recurring (forty-one to be precise) stays in Melbourne's Monash Medical Centre, as I was about to leave to go home at night, I would stand at the foot of his bed, and say (whether he was awake or asleep), Love you, Pudda. Always have, always will.

After he died, and out on the Camino, I changed just one word of this special mantra.

"Love you, Pudda. Always DID , always WILL."

They say losing a child (or sibling, so as not to exclude my surviving son Richard and daughter Melissa here), is one of the hardest things in life to endure. Let me tell you here and now: losing a child is not one of the hardest things in life; it is THE HARDEST THING .

Jamie's death haunts me; it leaves me gutted every single day that I continue to live.

And, if you really want to know, time is NOT a HEALER. Time NEVER lets you get OVER the loss of a child (or sibling). All you do is learn how to manage to get through one more day living with the pain of your loss. (Just looking at the photo below brings on tears.)

In the film, The Way, Tom Avery continually sees a vision of Daniel at various places and in various situations as he walks his Camino: leaning against a tree; among fellow pilgrims at a dining table; looking on from a distance of a grassy knoll; as one of six monks pulling on the ropes to swing the amazingly enormous incense urn in the Santiago Cathedral.

On my Camino, Jamie was with me every day. He was especially present on the long and barren Meseta Plain. Jamie will always hold the most special of places in my shattered heart.

Love you Pudda. Always did, always will.

1. Preparation

It's six months to the day before I begin my Camino de Santiago trek across the top of Spain.

I find I have cause to phone my medical saint: cardiologist Dr Ken.

On my daily exercise walks—the ones I'm doing to prepare myself for the Camino, but which in reality are nowhere near long enough to be considered serious dress rehearsals—I'm experiencing a heavy cramp across my chest. Some weeks ago, the day I'd walked to work and back—a fourteen kilometre round trip—I'd pushed through the pain barrier, the dull throb coming from somewhere close to my heart. Yet, still I remained worried.

Dr Ken listened to my story over the phone, and immediately ordered a 'stress test' (read 'torture test'). I'd done this thing twice before, and hated it, both times. They put