Pilgrimpace's Blog

This article was first published in the Fairacres Chronicle, Vol. 43 No. 1, Summer 2010.

The Road to Santiago

As part of a recent Sabbatical, I spent September and October 2009 on pilgrimage in Spain, walking around 650 miles from Valencia to Santiago de Compostela[i].  Santiago has been one of the most important pilgrim destinations since the tomb of the Apostle James the Great was discovered there early in the ninth century.  Walking the Camino to Santiago is becoming increasingly popular (although nowhere near as popular as it was in the Middle Ages).  Well over 100,000 people walk it each year, mostly on the Camino Frances from Roncevalles in the Pyrenees.  Interestingly, many who walk are not Christians.

I decided to take a much quieter route, the Camino de Levante, which goes from Valencia, via Albacete, Toledo and Avila to Zamora, before skirting the border with Portugal and on to Santiago.  I decided on this route because I wanted the opportunity for solitude; so that I could encounter Spain rather than pilgrim infrastructure; and so I could visit some of the sites associated with the Carmelite Mystics.

My pilgrimage developed into three parts.  The first was three weeks walking solo from Valencia to Toledo.  This included nine days walking in a more or less straight line through the empty flatness of La Mancha, which you will know from Don Quixote.  At Toledo I was met by two friends on holiday.  By this time I needed company, so I spent five days with them, walking a little and then going by car to Avila and Segovia.  I then got the train to Zamora and walked again from there.  This was a more relaxed walk, with less mileage each day, and the company of pilgrims on the route from Seville.  I was able to spend a few days on retreat with the Cistercians at Osiera, and reached Santiago in time for my family who had come to meet me.  If my calculations are correct, I walked around 650 miles.  I usually walked around 15 miles a day, with my longest day being 27 miles.  When possible, I stayed the night in albergues, or pilgrim hostels.  When these were not available, I used bed and breakfast or cheap hotels.  I carried a rucksack weighing around 25lbs.

Many people ask me why I walked.  This is a very difficult question.  Pilgrimage is something that runs very deep for me.  Some people have spoken about pilgrimage in terms of vocation, of being called, and this certainly makes sense to me. On a more mundane level, I wanted to get a break; to face the physical, mental and spiritual challenges of a pilgrimage; to have some time and space; and to visit Spain.

Walking the Camino was one of the best things I have done and also one of the hardest.  As well as an adventure, it has deepened my prayer and my relationship with God.  I am grateful for this opportunity to share some of it.

A Communion of Friendship and Gratitude

The first week of the pilgrimage was extremely hard.  A combination of heat, unfamiliar food and anxiety about whether I was up to it meant I would have run home if I could have done it without anyone noticing.  I was thrown back on God, on my inner resources, and on the love and support of those at home and the people who live along the way.

I kept in touch with people at home through my blog and mobile phone.  I found a very strong sense of connection with people at home who wanted to share as much as possible in the pilgrimage.  One friend wrote, “On Tuesday I walked the 2 miles back from the garage at 7.30 am, and felt that I was walking with you, although we were many miles apart.” When I got home, I found that a giant map of Spain had grown around the walls of my Parish Church, with my route marked on it. In some sense I was walking for those who were unable to go on pilgrimage.  I find it very moving to reflect on this.

Going away enabled me to see with new eyes just how much I am part of a web of love and communion.  Going into solitude – I was the only pilgrim on the route for the first three weeks and my Spanish is not yet good enough for deep conversations – made me realise how much a part of a loving community I am.  Stepping aside from ‘ordinary life’ enabled me to be truly thankful for the things I already have.

The Spanish people I encountered along the Way were kind and generous.  On a long solitary day in the Valencian hill country, I saw four people, harvesting melons in a field in the distance.  One called me over and gave me a watermelon for breakfast. Towards the end of an afternoon of scorching heat, I passed a farming cooperative for people with learning disabilities.  The manager asked if I was a pilgrim, told me to wait, and reappeared with a bottle of cold water. When I went to pay for my morning coffee and refresco in a bar, the owner refused my money “because you are a pilgrim”. The pilgrimage goes very deep in the Spanish soul and there was a great respect for it and desire to help me.

Friendships deepened and new ones were made.  One day in October I walked the 13 miles from Campobercerros to Laza with Jose Carlos, a pilgrim from Brazil.  I did not know Jose Carlos before the Pilgrimage.  We met after Zamora, found we were very comfortable in one another’s company, became good friends and walked together for two or three weeks (not least because whenever we parted, we found we caught up again by accident).  Jose Carlos taught me a lot, not least giving me the gift of slowing down and taking things at a much more measured pace.  We arrived in the early afternoon, found the albergue, had a meal and then siesta.   When we woke, there was a wonderful Camino evening.  Two French pilgrims arrived.  We went to Mass for the Feast of Santa Teresa of Avila. Then went to buy bread for the French who were leaving before dawn.  We could not find the bakery.  A man stopped his car, got out, banged on a door and summoned the old woman inside to open her bakery “because there are pilgrims who need bread”.  Then dinner.  Over an excellent meal of paella, chicken and chips, salad, bread, wine, ice cream and coffee (and all for €9), we had laughter and conversation in a basic mixture of Spanish and French about the very deepest things of God and humanity. This was gift.  In the morning, the French pilgrims had gone.

Walking and Praying

On the Camino, my praying became entwined with my walking.  While I walked I tried to pray. Sometimes the praying was determined by my physical state.  When I was feeling strong and the landscape was beautiful it was easy to overflow with joy and praise (those who remember my singing voice from Bede House Chapel, the House that SLG used to have in Kent, will be glad that this was in remote and lonely places!).  At other times I measured out the miles in intercession.  On long days when I had walked 20 miles, had another couple of hours to go and it was too hot for anything, the most I could do was offer up the suffering (and at times, even this was too much; on a few occasions I fell asleep while walking).  Friends kindly sent me exercises connecting  prayer with breathing.  I know that many pilgrims use them but I did not find them right for me.

What I gradually discovered was that the walking became the praying.  Alan Ecclestone describes the pilgrimages of Charles Peguy to Chartres:  A pilgrimage gets to the holy place at last but what gives it its part in prayer is the slamming down of ones feet to complete the journey while praying the while for all its features[ii].  In putting one foot in front of another, in the tiredness, in the blisters, in the being at one with myself, the landscape and God, in the mind quietening, in all this, walking, pilgrimage itself, became prayer.

The simple goodness of walking and praying the Camino was a falling more deeply into God.  The walking became a deeper loving.   The incarnatedness of pilgrim prayer, its coming out of kilometre after kilometre, mile after mile of effort, is tested because the Camino is also a School of Charity.   I have already written of how generous the people living along the Way were.  One important thing for me was to learn to receive it.  It can be more testing to learn to live with other pilgrims.  Busy albergues can be challenge.  Everyone is crowded into a simple dormitory with some showers, facilities for hand washing clothes, and maybe a kitchen.  Everyone is tired.  Most people want to get an early night.  Some people snore.  Some people get up to prepare for walking at four in the morning.  Dealing with this is an exercise in the practical love that comes out of praying.  It is also part of learning basic pilgrim attitudes.  These seem to me to revolve around gratitude; to be grateful for the love and care expressed in so many ways, while accepting the difficulties and discomforts with grace.

Another key aspect of praying and prayerful attitudes that came out of the pilgrimage was trust.  Going off to another country to undertake a challenge that was greater than anything I had done before was a risk.  I had to learn to trust myself and my abilities, to trust others (and also to discern when it was right not to trust others), and to trust God.  This could be seen, for example, in finding accommodation each night.  At home know that I will always be sheltered and comfortable.  On the Camino I did not know where I would spend the next night.  As I walked, I relaxed and the anxiety about whether I would get a bed slipped away.  This is an attitude I must work to keep now.

Walking with the Cross

One of the themes weaving through the pilgrimage was the Cross.  Spain has many Crosses, some marking the way.  The sight of a Cross would remind me of why I was there, that I was responding to a deep call, that I was traveling deeper into the Grace and Love of God.  A friend had made me a small Cross to hold.  It was also comfortable to hold the tau that was on a cord around my neck as I walked.  Feeling it in my palm was a way of praying.  I was also reminded of the Cross when I thought about the weight I carried because my rucksack was made by Crux.  As I walked I was given much to ponder about the Passion and Death and Resurrection of Christ.

The walking was also a constant reminder of the reality of the Cross in the world.  When I go for a walk on a day off here, I am able to choose where I go.  I often head off for favourite and beautiful hills in Shropshire or the Cotswolds.  The Camino is different because it takes you from your start to Santiago via the centres of population.  It is a walk through the world where the suffering of Christ, particularly in the least of his brothers and sisters, is very visible.  Every town I walked through in southern and central Spain was covered in fascist and anti-fascist graffiti which formed a running debate, in particular on the presence of Muslim immigrants.  This led me to ponder some of the less comfortable aspects of the Camino, not least that St James ceases being the simple fisherman or the pilgrim and becomes Matamoros, the Warrior slaying the Moors in the Reconquest of Spain.  The Camino brought deep connection with the world and its troubles, not escape from them.

This was also apparent in walking through the environment.  Walking through enormous industrial zones, by village rubbish heaps or picking my way through vast construction sites was a sharp reminder that suffering happens to the earth as well as to God and God’s children.  The Cross was there in the beautiful as in the day entering Galicia when the vapour trails of aircraft made crosses in the sky, leaving beauty and despoliation mingling in the heavens.

It was important to prayerfully engage with this suffering.  It was a reminder that the Pilgrimage, which can be viewed as a mirror of the journey of faith, is an ever deepening participation in the Incarnation, an ever increasing commitment to the Kingdom of God.  Somehow, the suffering undertaken on the Road to Santiago was a participation in the Passion, a communion with the suffering of so many brothers and sisters and of the created order.  The Pilgrimage became very much a lived commitment to Hope.  Having walked it I can understand why Gerry Hughes calls his excellent account of a pilgrimage Walk to Jerusalem: In Search of Peace[iii]. The Camino gave me a great deal to ponder about what the little people can do, about the power of that one, small, broken body, nailed to the Cross.

Arriving and Beginning

On Sunday 25^th October we left the albergue at O Outriera, eleven miles from Santiago, in the early morning and set as fast a pace as we could for Santiago.  We walked through eucalyptus forests and into agricultural land.  Suddenly, four or five miles away we saw the three towers of Santiago Cathedral shining in milky sunshine.  We celebrated with shouts and songs and chocolate.  Spurred on, we fought our way through the runners of the Santiago Marathon, and arrived at the Cathedral just before the Pilgrim Mass.  The Cathedral was full and noisy.  I had too many tears to sing.  Mass ended with the Botafumeiro, the enormous thurible that takes eight men to operate, swinging as high as it could go.  After Mass, a visit to the Pilgrim Office to get my Compostela, the Latin certificate proving I had made the pilgrimage.  In the quiet of the next morning, again to the Cathedral to hug the statue of St James above the altar and to pray a thank you and a commitment before his relics in the Crypt.  And then the Pilgrim Mass again, this time to hear myself among the pilgrims who had arrived the previous day.

Now I am home.  Some of the Pilgrimage disappears into memory.  Some stays with me as I reflect and am changed by the experience.  Some of it is in the future.  Despite saying every day of the walk that I would never do it again, I am planning to walk the 60 mile Camino Ingles from A Coruna with my daughter next year.  And is it possible now to dream dreams about the next Sabbatical?