In 1986/87 I was an au pair in Seville, Spain. I left in October and didn’t see my family again until the end of the following May. That was a long time. Long because there was no internet, and we relied on phones and letters. Letters mainly because at that time we didn’t have our own house phone in Ireland, so I would have to call our lovely neighbours who would run in next door to get my parents. But why am I mentioning this time? It’s because it was the first time I heard of the Camino. I came back determined that one day I would walk it. In recent years, I got fed up hearing all these Camino stories.  I thought that I knew about it long before everyone else. I didn’t of course. It’s only going on since the 12^th century and even before. But I felt some sense of proprietorship over the whole idea and besides, nowadays everybody was doing it. (Especially since that film ‘The Way’) And I probably felt a bit envious. I was delighted, however, when two years ago my son Victor announced he was walking from Porto to Santiago on the Camino. I didn’t begrudge the fact that he beat me to it. Family is different!

A few months after Victor, I finally made it. I walked with a great friend, who is a Camino connoisseur. She has covered more kilometres on the Camino than I can imagine. I joined her for three days to walk from Santiago to Finisterre. At the end of day one I could barely move. I checked my step count when I was getting into bed and announced that I was short about 150 steps to make it to the 50,000 mark. My friend suggested that I should walk around the room to make the milestone number. I was aghast. I could barely move and lying horizontal was all my brain could focus on. I got into bed. (To be fair she’s a maths teacher -numbers matter!).

So that was my first proper Camino experience, and I learned a lot from that, about the albergues, how to get your luggage transported and especially to have bigger shoes if you want to hold on to your big toenails.  Another connection with the Camino was from 1990.  I was in Santiago de Compostella with a Galician friend on a day trip from Vigo.  We pretended we had walked the Camino by crawling up the main steps of the Cathedral in exhaustion. We put our hand where centuries of pilgrims did before us (there’s a print of a hand worn away), under the Statue of St James in the Portico of the Gloria and filed up the aisle with the pilgrims and got blessed by the priest. So apart from being a fraud, I treasure that experience, because now the main entrance is a museum. You can’t enter the Cathedral by the front steps. You have to book in advance to get to see Master Mateo’s amazing and awe inspiring, Portico de la Gloria, in all its technicolour glory.

Well, this May I headed off with my daughter Alice. We had a window of a week which would get us five days walking. She had finished college. Her younger brother had flown off to Canada. Things were quiet on all fronts… I was restless. So, we went for it. We had decided to go only a week before, over a glass of wine, so we had to get our act together quickly. Flights hadn’t started going to Santiago for the Summer months, so Porto was the only option (and really good value too). That meant getting a bus to Valença and crossing the river Minho/Miño to Tui in Spain. I decided to let Chat GPT help me with the logistics, and I should know better to always check and verify. I figured this was a very simple task for generative AI. That was until Alice asked why we were walking a marathon on the last day.  Whoops.

I picked up our ‘Credentials’ (Camino passports) in Saint James’s Church in Dublin, before we left for our trip. I figured we would be too late to get one in Tui. St James’s Church is where the Irish Camino Society office is based. I got my first stamp there and my first ‘Buen Camino’ from the group sitting around the table. It was a nice taste of things to come. When I showed my father the Credential, he told me that he and my Mum got married in St James’s Church. I liked the synergy, another journey starting from there. My father said I’m guessing you will get a story from the Camino. I reassured him that there were enough Camino stories out there and I wouldn’t be adding to them. Well, never say never as the saying goes.

I’m happy to report that I got no great insights along the path, no eureka moments that I will impart. But what I can say is I got a complete holiday from the usual thoughts that run on repeat in my brain. That’s it in a nutshell. I enjoyed the rhythm of the poles click-clacking along the path. My rhythm was different to Alice’s. It was hypnotic. In musical terms, we decided that I walked in crochet, and she walked in quaver! The Camino is an assault on all the senses in a good way; the coolness of the forests, the banter with people from all corners of the world (luckily both of us speak Spanish too). The ‘Buen Caminos’ from some and the silence from others. All good. The cockerels who crowed when we left a town and welcomed us into the sleepy towns with their lovely, raised stone grain storage ‘hórreos.’ And Alice’s reaction to it all. How she made sure we got our stamps in our Credential in the forests, cafes and churches along the route.  Especially the beautiful wax ones. When she walked ahead, I could hear her chatting and laughing at times. And there were a lot of laughs, like when chatting to the man from New York in O Porriño, Alice complained about the snorer in the bunk above her in Tui, only to discover it was him. (He booked a hotel that night on the strength of it).  

Walking the Camino was beautifully simple. One aim – to get to the destination each day. That was the beauty of it. Leave 7.30, stop for coffee, (only when earned – min 5k) stop for lunch (plus a cold beer), walk again, wash clothes in hostel, shower, eat dinner (plus a glass or two of Albariño), and get up the next day and repeat. Once we got the first day’s 33k walk to Redondela out of the way, each day was manageable after that. Redondela always seemed to be on the horizon, and we thought we would never get there. (Happy to report 50,174 steps and no laps around the bedroom required!) We went to other lovely towns that we would otherwise probably never have visited; Pontevedra, Caldas de Reis and Padrón. (Yes, we had the Padrón peppers). Long walks, but what else had we to do?

We occasionally bumped into the same walkers, naturally, as we were all going the same direction. Some you would try to avoid; one interaction being plenty! And others it was nice to chat again and see how they were getting along. We weren’t the only mother and daughter walking together; we met a lovely South Korean mother and daughter and three nights in a row we were sleeping beside a Chilean mother and daughter. We reckoned there must be a mother and daughter section in the Albergues. The Chileans had come from Porto, but unfortunately the mother’s feet had had enough. I hope she managed the walk into Santiago on the last day. That was the goal.  

And feet was a common theme. When we first arrived in Caldas de Reis, we went straight to the hot spring to immerse our weary feet in the (very) hot water. Very soothing.  A conversation arose sitting around the rectangular hot spring between Alice and a group of American and Australians, about where to find a bar in Padrón that would be showing the Leinster rugby final the next day. The problem was that there was no Irish pub in Padrón. Everyone had their feet in the hot water until a pharmacist friend of theirs arrived and mentioned that we all could expect to develop foot fungal disease in a few weeks. Lovely. That caused an instant withdrawal of feet. Later that night, passing by the same hot spring, (after the best meal of the Camino), we reckoned foot fungus was the least of our worries. The late shift didn’t require much, if any, clothing and there was a group of about eight people who appeared to be presided over by an elderly gentleman who was lodged in the corner with his two legs elegantly splayed. Not a care in the world. As pilgrims we averted our gaze, of course, and legged it in hysterics back to our bunks. The pharmacist did save Alice’s infected foot blister by leaving an antibiotic cream in a bush (pinned on Google maps) for us to pick up along the route. Very kind. And the next day we did manage to find a place in Padrón that showed the match on a big screen. The homemade tortilla was fab but the match wasn’t so fab. Her Dad, another Leinster fan, was at the match in Bilbao. Not a happy bunny.

Alice’s big sister Sally-Anne rang us on a few occasions to see how we were getting on. I think she thought we would forget to get out of bed in the mornings or go the wrong way. (She’s the organised one in the family). She said she couldn’t walk the Camino with us, as she would be outside the Albergue waiting for us every day and we would drive her mad. And she has a point, but we did get up and we did manage to follow the arrows.  She was checking in to make sure we had our sun cream on, hats on, properly hydrated etc. We kept her informed of our adventures.

A saying I had read before, that we kept repeating along the path, was “the Camino always provides” We joked about it a lot, picking random things to apply it to including, blisters, barking dogs, toilets at the right time, and a fly swarmed restaurant where we dined on a sealed ice- cream and chatted to lovely Uruguayans from Paysandú. Proving our catchphrase, the owner of the restaurant sent us to the Barosa waterfall where we had a refreshing swim with two lovely English ladies, followed by a cold beer afterwards.

Alice was also collecting photos of cute things. Example; the beagles in the beagle farm, two miniature ponies and countless cats who crossed our path. We walked into Padrón with the Nashes, a lovely Irish/American couple talking all things Ireland, Scotland and their numerous walks, marathons etc. The Camino was a doddle for them. Also, the photo of their little grandson made it on to the cute list.  When we met them by chance in Santiago later we also discovered a shared love of the movie Shrek.  

But thinking about the Camino providing. It did provide my family with a fantastic violin teacher at the right time and in the right place, back in the early noughties. If Bjarke hadn’t met his wife Diane on the Camino he wouldn’t have moved to North County Dublin from Denmark and he wouldn’t have taught my daughters to play violin, and Sally-Anne might not be the great violin teacher that she is today, and she might not have met Dave… Just a thought. So, thank you Camino!

Getting to the Cathedral and receiving our final stamp on the Credential was great, but we were hot and tired. We even went to the mass in the Cathedral later in the evening, as you do. It was a Confirmation ceremony, bishop included, and very atmospheric. But our legs could only stand for so long, so we abandoned ship for an Italian restaurant where we drank Prosecco with a lovely Australian teacher. Later that night sitting on the ground in the square, looking up at the Cathedral with the lights on inside, it felt far more satisfying and relaxing than our initial arrival into the square in the heat of the day.

I was not far off Alice’s age when I first heard about the Camino in Seville and decided that one day I would walk it. I was her age when I crawled up the Cathedral steps with my Galician friend. Alice was sitting in the square that night, discussing her plans to return with her friends. So, forgive me for getting sentimental, but I was glad that the dreams of that nineteen-year-old girl in Seville had led to that special moment. I hope there will be more to come and that others in the family get the time and opportunity to walk some of the Camino too. (don’t worry guys, accompanying me is not a requirement!). I also hope it takes them a lot less time than it took me.

Footnote: We got to see the Portico de la Gloria before we left Santiago. Wow.

Foot note: Still looking healthy – no pharmacist required yet…