Walking the Camino

Anne Edwards describes the experience and lessons of a Santiago de Compostella pilgrim.

I’M stumbling at the first hurdle. My knee has seized up during the flight from Glasgow to Porto, and it gives way on my first attempt at standing.

“If this is me now, what am I going to be like once we get walking properly?”

Christine doesn’t dignify my whining with an answer.

Hanging onto the handrails, I limp out of the plane into the clear light of the October sun. I feel my petty self-frustrations evaporate in the warmth.

At first glance Christine and I must look like any other pale Scottish holidaymakers in our sandals and cropped trousers. What marks us out as being part of the Camino Pilgrim set is the scallop shells hanging from our rucksack straps. These were gathered during one of our training hikes along our local Hebridean seashore. My son bored holes through the base, threading twine to secure them to our bags. The scallop is the symbol associated with Saint James (in Spanish, Iago). He is shown pouring water from this makeshift dish to thirsty pilgrims.

It is late afternoon when we arrive at the cathedral. It has taken us twice as long to get here as our John Brierley guidebook says it should, the cathedral spires seeming always out of reach.

As we go inside, the adjustment from hot white sunlight to the dark cool of the interior draws me to sit in the nearest pew. Gilded images are everywhere, the stories of saints and sinners told in paint and plaster. I inhale air scented from centuries of burning incense. My pulse slows. The cool wood soothes my hot limbs. The outside hubbub of the 21st century city is muted. After a few moments of prayer, I raise my head and watch as candles are lit around me.

Memories of my Hebridean Grannie come to me. As a little girl I sat beside her in church, bored by the Gaelic sermons, fidgeting with the knap of her black fur coat. What would Grannie Johan Macleod have made of this church with its candles, gold paint and statues? Would she have recognised it as a church at all? What too would she have made of our end goal, the bones purported to be those of James, brother and disciple of Jesus; would she have seen this as improbable at best or, at worst, blasphemy?

My communion with Grannie, and all things John Knox, is interrupted by Christine’s hand on my shoulder. We must acquire the official Pilgrim Credential from the cathedral before we set off to find tonight’s hostel. A youth wearing ear pods distractedly sells each of us our official record card, little blank squares waiting to be authenticated by each hostel, café, and church we will encounter on our Camino. He stamps the document with the sign of Porto Cathedral, writes the date, and that is all the ceremony our pilgrimage commencement receives.

Bamboozled by the maze of stairs and shallow twists and turns, we end up returning to the cathedral not once but twice. Christine consults John Brierley and then walks round in small circles, tilting her phone at different angles to consult our other guide, Google Maps. I take the momentary break to sit down on the steps and exchange sandals for walking boots. A tiny elderly lady, dressed in drab clothes hesitates as she passes us. Our eyes meet.

I ask ‘Excuse signoria… Camino?’ and she launches into rapid Portuguese.

Her charm is in her gap-toothed smile and bright eyes behind glasses. She puts down her bucket of cleaning materials and points to the arrow sign we had overlooked, marked by a scallop in grey cement. She takes time to perform a lengthy blessing for us, repeatedly making the sign of the cross and saying words that include the Portuguese for Lord.

This encounter makes a great impression on us, providing the spiritual element to our journey’s beginning which was lacking from officialdom at the cathedral.

Each morning after this first day, we set off from the hostels at a fair pace. We never tire of the novelty of citrus fruit on trees or olive branches growing over garden walls shading the streets. We catch sight of grape vines, purple and green, ripening in the sunshine. Everything fruity is larger and more temptingly luscious than anything sealed in a supermarket plastic container.

However, as the day plods on, we become weary, slowing down in the shady places beside water, stopping altogether if we are presented with a bench. One day we are resting on stone terraced steps under an ancient cross. It is at that point of the afternoon when it’s too early to stop, but we have no desire to continue. I study the carved image of the crucifixion, worn by centuries of wind and rain to a smooth indistinct nubbin. It feels vaguely disrespectful as I slurp tepid water from my bottle then pour the remainder over my hot head in an echo of baptism.

Perhaps Saint Iago hears us and intervenes to refresh his weary Pellegrino, for a woman comes out of her garden gate with a jug of water and glasses. We tumble out our few words of Portuguese in appreciation. Ice chinks in the glasses swirling with fresh lemon and lime and a sprig of mint. It is beyond delicious.

Slow travel means you can observe what might otherwise be missed. The warm air is insect free, there are no biting beasties like our Hebridean midges, but also no butterflies or bees. Surrounding these red roofed villages is the green desert created by agricultural pesticides, no bug-room. Of course, birds and bees are interconnected so our early morning starts are missing a dawn chorus. How soulless would our island home be without birds?

When we reach Santiago de Compostella, Christine and I are in a café at the main square, waiting for the special Pilgrim entrance at the cathedral to open. We watch the many groups of Pelligrinos interact with one another; greetings, hugs, and kisses, but many just lying prone, recovering on the warm cobbles. We have taken part in similar reunions ourselves, congratulating what seems to be the entire cast we met along The Way.

In what feels like the anticipation of a momentous event, it’s not some pertinent bible verse that comes into my head, but what was once a favourite of my daughter and my late husband, the Miley Cyrus song The Climb:

Ain’t about how fast I get there Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side It’s the climb

We join the queue at the pilgrim’s entrance, where we are contained in a roped off space behind columns. The security officials usher out the tourists. When released into the body of the cathedral we sit close together on the crowded pews.

My Grannie comes into my thoughts again and I look at this noisy business through her filter, museum or living church? Sacred or profane? To quell this inner conflict, I shut my eyes to pray. Aware of movement and whispering around me I endeavour to cancel out these stimuli, determined to be receptive to the Holy Spirit.

A respectful hush falls in a rewarding blanket of stillness. When I open my eyes, I feel the transformation in the atmosphere, like the rise in air pressure before a thunderstorm, as if the very bones of the building resonate with something intangible yet real and present.

Out of the gloom hurry five robed men. The heavy musculature of their arms is revealed as sleeves are shaken back. They wind the ropes in practised loops around forearms and wrists, anchoring shoulders, planting their feet. They pull like sailors hoisting sails. The famous Botafumerio is hauled smoothly, rising high into the cathedral arches, trailing visible smoke and invisible scent. Shaped like a silver salt cellar but the size of an old war sea mine, it sears the air over our bowed heads. We hear its rushing swoop, dousing us with the burning incense of ages intended to sweeten the smell of us pungent Pellegrino. Whole minutes pass as it lunges across the cathedral span then, just as we might tire of the spectacle, it stops abruptly, the gladiator monks wrestling the censer to a standstill.

In the euphoria after this, I feel I know the meaning of life. It is in the realisation that we ourselves are answering prayer by treating others how we would want to be treated ourselves. ¤