After returning from my first Camino in 2009 I did this short talk based around the five questions that you are likely to be asked at least once should you walk the Camino:
1.
Where are you
from?
2.
Where did you
start?
3.
How much does
your bag weigh?
4.
How are your
feet doing?
5.
Are you going
all of the way to Santiago?
Where
I am from is an easy one to answer: Nottingham and that invariably brought up
the subject of the man who became a constant companion on my Camino – Robin
Hood because I found that never mind where people are from they have heard of
him! But I did meet people from all over the world: Spain, Portugal, Canada,
Australia, America, Germany, Italy, Holland and there was a feeling of everyone
coming together from all over the world for a common cause, all coming together
just like the symbol of the Camino the shell which used to be carried by
Pilgrims on their way back from Santiago as proof that they had completed their
Pilgrimage – the ridges of the shell meet at one point just as Pilgrims from
all over the world meet at Santiago.
The
where I started was St Jean Pied du Port which is a small town on the French
side of the Pyrenees. To get there I had to go by car to Birmingham airport,
plane to Biarritz, bus to the train station and then the train to St Jean and
then walk to the Pilgrims Office where I got my Pilgrim Credential and this is
what you get stamped every night to prove that you are a Pilgrim and have a
right to stay in the Pilgrim hostels.
These
vary a lot along the route – this first one was in a three-storey house and had
three bedrooms in which slept six people and this was actually quite good
because the next night I was in a room with almost 200 people! But after walking
27km around a mountain in rain and snow no one minded too much, what we did
mind was that the place was not going to open for another two hours so the
people that I had been walking with, Bruce from Canada and Katrina from
Australia, went and found ourselves some hot chocolate.
That
is one aspect of the Camino that I really enjoyed, getting to know people from
all over the World and walking with them for a bit and then having them go off.
Some people did remain in the same groups for their entire walks but I enjoyed
meeting up with different people as I went - I never walked with anyone for
more than two days with the exception of Bruce who I walked with for the first
two days and then, when I was 20km from Santiago in the pouring rain I stopped
to take a picture of a signpost and heard someone shout ‘Rachael!’ and after
over four weeks it was Bruce again and I walked with him for the rest of the
day.
Other
people who stood out were Vanessa who was walking the Camino with her Mother
before, like me, she went home to try to find a job and who was being driven up
the wall by her Mum mainly by her snoring at night and you do quickly find that
the level of a person’s snoring is a good reason to be friends with them or not
on the Camino. Then there were Roger and Glenda from Australia who were
actually some of the few Christians I found on the Camino and he was, in fact,
a Baptist minister. I didn’t spend all of my time walking with English speakers
either – one day I spent with a woman from Holland and a man from Italy and we
communicated in a mixture of German, French, English and Spanish!
My
bag was quite light because it weighed only 6.4kg before food and water but I
carried 1 litre of water which was an extra 1kg and then food which tended to
be bread, cheese, some pasta and a tin or tuna or sardines and that took me up
to maybe 8kg but the average for people tended to be 10kg. To put that into
perspective I weigh about 46kg so I was carrying about 20% of my weight but I
met two girls from Korea who were the same size as me, if not smaller, and they
were each carrying 15kg and this included a laptop computer! It is possible to
post items forward to Santiago but the two of them refused to do so.
It’s
very easy to actually manage on very little on the Camino – particularly with
my generation we are very materialistic and yet out there I did on two changes
of clothes that I washed every day by hand, a few toiletries, a book to read, a
sleeping bag and very little else. We all did have my luxuries though - a camera
and a music player were mine but other people had theirs – quite a few women
took make-up, others took several reading books
Feet
are a constant concern to every walking Pilgrim because they are your only form
of transport and without them you are stuck so you do everything that you can
to stop getting blisters. For me this meant wearing two pairs of socks and
using zinc oxide tape as well as Vaseline on them but, as some of you may know,
this did not entirely work for me because I got a blister that became infected
and was stuck 120km from Santiago for a week. But I was lucky in this because I
met a group of Germans that included a Doctor who told me to stop walking and
sent me to a Spanish Doctor who told me to stop walking. The Germans also
booked me into a hostel and here I was very lucky because it was run by a man
called Jose and he is the kindest man on the Camino – he kept coming by to
check on me and played dominoes with me in his bar for hours. One day there was
no one else staying in the hostel so he brought me a hot chocolate and then
gave me the key to my bedroom so that I could lock myself in and feel extra
safe.
After
a week I returned to see a Doctor but this time I was accompanied by a lady
from Holland who spoke some Spanish and the Doctor rang up her colleague once
or twice to translate a few things and I was told that I could walk again and
after that I only had the one blister in a week.
I
did indeed intend to walk all of the way to Santiago and managed to do so but for me the destination
was not as much fun as they journey.
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